108 THE EVOLUTION OF MAN. 



related. If the proper balance of these faculties is destroyed, the naturalist 

 is hurried into chimerical fancies by his imagination ; while the same gift 

 leads the gifted naturalist of sufficient strength of reason to the most 

 important discoveries." — Johannes Muller (1831). 



The further we proceed in human tribal history, the nar- 

 rower does that part of the animal kingdom become within 

 which we must look for extinct ancestors of the human 

 race. At the same time, the evidence as to the history of 

 the evolution of our race given by what we have called the 

 records of creation, the evidence of Ontogeny, of Compara- 

 tive Anatomy, and of Palaeontology, grows constantly more 

 extensive, complete, and trustworthy. It is therefore 

 natural that Phylogeny should assume a more definite form 

 the nearer we approach the higher and the highest stages 

 of the animal kingdom. 



Comparative Anatomy especially has done far more for 

 our knowledge of these higher stages of evolution in the 

 animal kingdom than for the lower. This important 

 science, which aims at a true philosophy of organic forms, 

 has made greater progress in the Vertebrate tribe than in any 

 section of the Invertebrate. Cuvier, Meckel, and Johannes 

 Muller had already laid a deep and extensive foundation ; 

 and now the Comparative Anatomy of Vertebrates has 

 recently been powerfully advanced by the admirable inves- 

 tigations of Owen and Huxley, and, especially, has been 

 perfected to such a degree by the unsurpassed labours of 

 Gegenbaur, that it now forms one of the strongest supports 

 of the Theory of Descent. Relying on the evidence thus 

 furnished, we can now, with a great degree of certainty, 

 recognize the most important outlines of the series of stages 

 and the ramifications of the Vertebrate pedigree. 



