146 Darwin as an Anthropologist 
the modern State.” He spoke of the theory of evolution as an 
unproved hypothesis, and declared that it ought not to be taught 
in the schools, because it was dangerous to the State. “We must 
not,” he said, “teach that man has descended from the ape or any 
other animal.” When Darwin, usually so lenient in his judgment, 
read the English translation of Virchow’s speech, he expressed 
his disapproval in strong terms. But the great authority that 
Virchow had—an authority well founded in pathology and 
sociology—and his prestige as President of the German Anthro- 
pological Society, -had the effect of preventing any member of 
the Society from raising serious opposition to him for thirty 
years. Numbers of journals and treatises repeated his dogmatic 
statement: “It is quite certain that man has descended neither 
from the ape nor from any other animal.” In this he persisted till 
his death in 1902. Since that time the whole position of German 
anthropology has changed. The question is no longer whether man 
was created by a distinct supernatural act or evolved from other 
mammals, but to which line of the animal hierarchy we must look 
for the actual series of ancestors. The interested reader will 
find an account of this “battle of Munich” (1877) in my three 
Berlin lectures (April, 1905), Der Kampf um die Eniwickelungs- 
Gedanken}. 
The main points in our genealogical tree were clearly recognised 
by Darwin in the sixth chapter of the Descent of Man. Lowly 
organised fishes, like the lancelet (Amphioxus), are descended from 
lower invertebrates resembling the larvae of an existing Tunicate 
(Appendicularia). From these primitive fishes were evolved higher 
fishes of the ganoid type and others of the type of Lepidosiren 
(Dipneusta). It is a very small step from these to the Amphibia: 
“In the class of mammals the steps are not difficult to conceive 
which led from the ancient Monotremata to the ancient Marsupials ; 
and from these to the early progenitors of the placental mammals. 
We may thus ascend to the Lemuridae ; and the |interval is not very 
wide from these to the Simiadae. The Simiadae then branched off 
into two great stems, the New World and Old World monkeys ; and 
from the latter, at a remote period, Man, the wonder and glory of the 
Universe, proceeded?” 
In these few lines Darwin clearly indicated the way in which we 
were to conceive our ancestral series within the vertebrates. It is 
fully confirmed by all the arguments of comparative anatomy and 
embryology, of palaeontology and physiology ; and all the research of 
the subsequent forty years has gone to establish it. The deep interest 
1 Bng. transl.; Last Words on Evolution, London, 1906, 
2 Descent of Man (Popular Edit.), p. 255. 
