CONCLUDING REMARKS 
In the course of Phylogeny the body of Man has undergone a 
series of modifications which still in part find expression in his 
Ontogeny. There are indications that changes in his organisa- 
tion are still continuing, and that the Man of the future will be 
different from the Man of to-day. It is the more necessary to 
emphasise this, because it has only recently been asserted by one 
in authority in the anthropological world, that “since the Neolithic 
Age Man has been a fixed type.” 
I wilhngly admit that nothing is gained by the mere 
demonstration of “animal likenesses,’ and that the final and 
only satisfactory solution of the great riddle of Man must lie in 
the demonstration of his genealogy and the hne of his inheritance. 
Although small and insignificant in their first appearance, 
structural changes become more and more distinctly marked 
from generation to generation, and more and more definitely 
fixed according to the laws of heredity and selection. There 
exist different degrees of the degenerative process: first an 
organ begins to degenerate in the adult body, then this 
degeneration finds expression in the embryo, then the organ 
in question only occurs in a certain percentage of the in- 
dividuals as a reversion, and finally even such _ occasional 
occurrence ceases, and all trace of the organ is lost. Osborn 
calls this process of gradual extinction the “long struggle 
of the destructive power of degeneration.” 
Although these changes are so manifold and follow such 
different directions (take, for example, those of the musculature), 
one principle lies at the bottom of them all, viz. the endeavour 
to shake off, as far as possible, all that is unnecessary and 
superfluous, in order to make room for further development. 
Weismann very justly remarks: “If Nature were not able to 
effect the disappearance of superfluous organs the transformation 
of species would have been well-nigh impossible, for the existing 
