HIS ANTIQUITY AND CHARACTERISTICS. 



27 



I suggest that nothing less than a series of miraculous interferences 

 by a Power above nature could possibly have brought about the 

 changes that would be required for the evolution of man from the 

 ancestral ape without any trace being left of its process. Does 

 it not make it simpler if we can only believe that — " the Lord God 

 formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils 

 the breath of life ; and man became a living soul " ? 



Dr. W. Woods Smyth : I am sure we may all congratulate Mr, 

 Dale upon the temperate and graceful way in which he has handled 

 this most delicate and difficult subject. The flint implement 

 evidence, as he has said, has certainly been overdone. However, 

 I beg to differ in regard to the Neanderthal man. There is no right 

 evidence for cutting him out of man's genealogical tree and linking 

 him with the ape, and this view is united with a grave error, which 

 the Victoria Institute will never receive, namely, that there have 

 been several species of men. It is easy to show that this is a fallacy. 

 Of the Quadrumana there are over 200 species ; when we come nearer 

 to man in the Simiidse, they drop to 11 species ; nearer, still in the 

 Anthropopithecus, there are only two or three species, and in the 

 Orang only one. These facts destroy the contention of there ever 

 having been several species of men. 



Again, as Professor Ray Lankester says — " No Evolutionist now 

 believes that the ape stood in the ancestry of man, although we meet 

 with men very ape-like in appearance. The ape is only an offspring 

 from the human line. The blood reaction test shows that the ape 

 is related to man as the donkey is to the horse. But the ass was 

 never in the ancestry of the horse." 



It may disarm opposition to the doctrine of the evolution of man 

 to remember that Professor Klaastch upholds the view that man has 

 had an entirely independent line of descent from that of the lower 

 animals, and going far back to the very earliest roots of the 

 mammalian genealogical tree. That is to say, low down in Palaeozoic 

 or primary epoch — a view which I have also held. The blood 

 reaction test also shows that between man and the lower animals 

 there is absolutely no relationship. We have an evidential fact in 

 support of this point from an unexpected source. In Psalm 

 cxxxix, Revised Version, we read : — 



