THE ERA OF HELPLESSNESS 67 



It is probable, from the disabilities, etc., named in 

 Chapter I, and the absence of hair, fur, and thick 

 hide, that during this long interval our brute an- 

 cestors frequently served as a choice article of diet 

 for the great contemporary monsters and carnivorae, 

 which rarely permitted isolated specimens to reach 

 that age when the bones had been hardened suffi- 

 ciently to make them difficult to masticate. 



This inference derives strong support from the 

 extreme scarcity of human fossils. At the same 

 time it offers a plausible explanation of this unique 

 phenomenon. 1 Under such circumstances, if any of 

 our brute ancestors of that period were distinguished 

 by any peculiarity not possessed by other creatures, 



1 Organic remains can only be fossilized when air, germs, water, 

 etc., are excluded, or when the remains have been hermetically 

 sealed. But this applies to all such remains equally, and there- 

 fore does not explain the unique scarcity of fossil human remains; 

 neither can this be explained by the assumption that the upright 

 brute is the most recent form of mammalia. For in the scarcity 

 of human fossils we have very nearly the only evidence and argu- 

 ment to support the above-mentioned assumption. This would 

 be reasoning in a circle. If it is contended, however, that 

 because the upright brute presents the most evolved form of 

 life, therefore it follows from the theory of evolution that it must 

 be the most recent, then the reply can be justly made that a most 

 evolved form must be the most adapted to its environment, and 

 that the first chapter of these essays proves most conclusively that 

 the upright brute, of all mammalian types at the time of it's first 

 appearance, was the least adapted. That adaptation only came 

 after the unadapted natural form had been supplemented by 

 artificial means, viz, clubs and missiles. It is not at all im- 

 probable that the two-footed brute is a variation from a kind 

 of brutes now extinct, which were the ancestors of the quad- 

 rumana as well as of the bipeds. This, in fact, is a belief ex- 

 pressed by Charles Darwin and a number of his most eminent 

 contemporaries and followers. On this theory the human 

 type may be the more ancient of the two, and it requires evi- 

 dence to prove its assumed recency. 



