342 The American Naturalist. [April, 
This exception is the interval between the anthropoid ape and the 
primitive savage. This is the only gap that remains open in the 
kingdom of the mind,—the one important lost chapter from the 
story of mental evolution. It is acknowledged by every well- 
informed scientist that man’s body came up from below. Its 
links of association with the lower animals are too many and too 
significant to admit of any other theory. Supernaturalism, there- 
fore, has taken its last stand upon man’s mind, and claims that | 
here at least the line of descent is a broken one, and that the gap 
could not have been filled without a direct interposition from the 
realm of spirit. 
This view of the case is not likely to be accepted as final, 
Science has bridged with facts so many.chasms in the kingdom 
of nature, that it will scarcely be ready to admit, certainly not 
till the case has been more thoroughly investigated, that here is 
a chasm which cannot be bridged, and must be leaped. And 
yet the known facts that bear upon the question are stubborn 
things to explain on the evolution theory. If, for instance, we 
examine the existing conditions of ape and savage intellect no 
evidence of any active evolution can be discovered. However 
the anthropoid apes gained their mental acuteness, there is nothing 
_ to show that it is increasing. The same may be said of the 
lowest savages. They are mentally stagnant. The indications 
are that their intellectual progress for thousands of years in the 
past has been almost nothing. Yet if man is the descendant of 
an anthropoid ape there must have been an extraordinary degree 
of mental development between the one state and the other 
to produce the great increase in size of brain and activity of intel- 
lect. Under the present conditions of imperceptible progress, 
the whole tertiary period of geology, and perhaps much of the 
secondary period, would be needed to fill the gap. Yet no such 
extensive interval can be admitted, and if we seek to deduce 
man’s mind from the ape mind we must be able to show that 
influences existed calculated to produce a much more rapid men- 
tal evolution than now can be perceived in either ape or savage- 
Man has changed but little physically since he became man, 
and perhaps changed little during the period in which he was 
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