ON OUR PRESENT KNOWLEDGE OF THE ORIGIN OF MAN. 479 



man were a series of tertiary primates, and the next nearest were the 

 anthropoid apes, the anthropomorphous catarrhines. The careful criti- 

 cal comparisons which the two zoologists, Paul and Fritz Sarasin, have 

 accomplished in their fine work. Eesearches in Ceylon (1893) shows 

 that the Veddahs of to-day, the dwarfish aborigines of Ceylon, approach 

 nearest to the anthropoid apes in the primitive relations of their bodily 

 structure, and that among the latter the chimpanzee on the one side 

 and the gorilla on the other stand nearest to man. The gibbon again, 

 as a lower and less specialized form, shows the closest agreement with 

 the common miocene ancestors of all the Anthropomorpha. This direct 

 family relationship is much clearer and easier to settle than that of any 

 other mammal. Far more obscure and enigmatical is, for example, that 

 of the elephants, the sirenia, the cetacea, the edentates (armadillos and 

 pangolins) in both hemispheres. Not only in his pentadactylate hands 

 and feet, but also iu other anatomical features does man show the charac- 

 teristic inherited features of his stock more clearly than many other 

 mammals, as, for example, ungulates, cetaceans, and bats. 



The immeasurable significance which this secure knowledge of the 

 primate origin of man possesses for the entire range of human science 

 lies clear before the eyes of every unprejudiced and logical thinker. 

 No one among the philosophers has more thoroughly based his authori- 

 tative influence upon a contemplation of the entire universe than has 

 the great English thinker Herbert Spencer, one of the few learned men 

 of the present day who unites the most profound scientific training 

 with the deepest philosophical speculation. Spencer belongs t > those 

 older nature philosophers who already before Darwin recognized in the 

 monistic theory of evolution the magic key which would unlock the 

 riddle of the world. He belongs also to those evolutionists who justly 

 lay the greatest stress upon progressive inheritance, upon the "trans- 

 mission of acquired characters." Like myself, Spencer has, from the 

 beginning, fought in the most resolute manner the germ-plasm theory 

 of Weismann, which denies the most important factor in the theory of 

 descent and wishes to explain the same chiefly through the omnipotence 

 of natural selection. 



In England the theory of Weismann has been received with much 

 approval, and is also kuown as neo-Darwinism, in opposition to older 

 views which are known as neo-Lamarckism. This designation is 

 entirely incorrect, for Charles Darwin was just as firmly convinced of 

 the fnndamental significance of progressive inheritance as was his great 

 predecessor Jean Lamarck and as is Herbert Spencer. 



I had three times the pleasure of visiting Darwin at Down, and each 

 time we discussed this important question upon which we completely 

 agreed. I share the conviction of Herbert Spencer that progressive 

 inheritance is an indispensable factor of the monistic theory of evolu- 

 tion and one of its most important elements. To deny it, as Weismann 

 does, is to fly to mysticism, and it is better to accept the mysterious 



