238 
lier crude material, making of tliis an instrument for higher 
ends ; does not make an implement in the sense which we 
attach to that word in the hands of man. Hence the imple- 
ment is a line of demarcation between man and other 
animals. This fact, again, is well-nigh universally accepted 
by differing schools of scientists ; though Mr. Darwin gives 
it but a qualified assent,* and Sir John Lubbock suggests that 
tool-making was at first a matter of accident. 
But though the use of implements is acknowledged to be 
a line of demarcation between man and all contemporary 
animals, it is argued that existing species of Simiae have 
reached the limit of their development, but, there were pre- 
historic species which by natural selection attained higher 
and yet higher stages of progress, until the first type of 
man emerged, when the antropoidal progenitor gradually 
became extinct. Hence it is said to be unfair to make the 
use of implements a demarcation between man and pre- 
existent animals, or a characteristic of his standing in the 
scale of being. 
To this objection there are two replies. First, in the 
present state of scientific knowledge, there is no tangible 
evidence of the existence of any such higher kind of apes. 
The links between the highest known species and man must 
have been many and long ; but no trace of these has yet 
been found. True, this is a merely negative reply. But 
the existence of such species of apes is a pure assumption 
based upon analogy. Now the want of data — that is to say, 
negative evidence — is logically valid against an assumption. 
Since then, the links of connexion are wanting, this anthro- 
poidal pedigree of man must be held in suspense as only an 
hypothesis. Darwin presents it with his accustomed modesty. f 
But Haeckel goes so far as to say, “we must necessarily 
come to the conclusion that the human race is a small branch 
of the group of Catarrh/ini , and has developed out of long 
since extinct apes , of this group in the Old World.”% 
Now there is danger that an unproved inference put forth 
with such authority shall be prematurely accepted as the 
verdict of science. But though we would concede much 
licence to hypothesis, yet in the name of science as well as 
of logic, we must protest against putting assumptions in the 
# Descent of Man , vol. i. p. 49. 
t Ibid., vol. ii. chap. xxvi. 
X The History of Creation , vol. iii. chap, xxii. (The italics are his own J 
