THE ORIGIN OF MAN 235 



Professor Virchow is reported to have said in a 

 recent lecture: "We seek in vain for the missing 

 link. There exists a definite barrier separating man 

 from the animal which has not yet been effaced — 

 heredity, which transmits to children the faculties of 

 their parents. We have never seen a monkey bring a 

 man into the world, nor a man produce a monkey. 

 All men having a simian appearance are simply patho- 

 logical variants. It was generally believed a few years 

 ago that there existed a few human races which still 

 remained in the primitive inferior condition of their 

 organization. But all these races have been objects 

 of minute investigation, and we know that they have 

 an organization like ours, often indeed superior to 

 that of supposed higher races. Thus the Eskimo head 

 and the head of the Terra del Fuegians belong to the 

 perfected types.". 



In view of the evidence furnished by examining all 

 the races and varieties of men, he says: "Thus we 

 are repulsed at every line of the assault upon the 

 human question. All the researches undertaken with 

 the aim of finding continuity in progressive develop- 

 ment have been without result. There exists no pro- 

 anthropes, no man-monkey, and the ' connecting link ' 

 remains a phantom." 



The fragments of a skeleton recently discovered, of 

 a supposed man-ape, in the Pleistocene deposits of 

 Java have not been proved to be such. 



Dana says: "Man's origin has thus far no suffi- 

 cient explanation from science. His close relations 

 in structure to the Man-Apes are unquestionable. 

 They have the same number of bones with two excep- 

 tions, and the bones are the same in kind and struc- 

 ture. The muscles are mostly the same. Both carry 

 their young in their arms. The affiliations strongly 

 suggest community of descent. But the divergencies 



