in others it is widely removed, giving the idea, so consonant with the theory of evolution as developed by Darwin, that all are derived from a common ancestor, from which the existing anthropoid apes as well as man have diverged. When, however, we turn from the details of anatomy to peculiarities of external form and motions, we find that, in a variety of characters, all these apes resemble each other and differ from man, so that we may fairly say that, while they have diverged somewhat from each other, they have diverged much more widely from ourselves. Let us briefly enumerate some of these differences.

External Differences of Man and Apes.

All apes have large canine teeth, while in man these are no longer than the adjacent incisors or premolars, the whole forming a perfectly even series. In apes the arms are proportionately much longer than in man, while the thighs are much shorter. No ape stands really erect, a posture which is natural in man. The thumb is proportionately larger in man, and more perfectly opposable than in that of any ape. The foot of man differs largely from that of all apes, in the horizontal sole, the projecting heel, the short toes, and the powerful great toe firmly attached parallel to the other toes; all perfectly adapted for maintaining the erect posture, and for free motion without any aid from the arms or hands. In apes the foot is formed almost exactly like our hand, with a large thumb-like great toe quite free from the other toes, and so articulated as to be opposable to them; forming with the long finger-like toes a perfect grasping hand. The sole cannot be placed horizontally on the ground; but when standing on a level surface the animal rests on the outer edge of the foot with the finger and thumb-like toes partly closed, while the hands are placed on the ground resting on the knuckles. The illustration on the next page (Fig. 37) shows, fairly well, the peculiarities of the hands and feet of the chimpanzee, and their marked differences, both in form and use, from those of man.

The four limbs, with the peculiarly formed feet and hands, are those of arboreal animals which only occasionally and awkwardly move on level ground. The arms are used in pro

gression equally with the feet, and the hands are only adapted for uses similar to those of our hands when the animal is at rest, and then but clumsily. Lastly, the apes are all hairy animals, like the majority of other mammals, man alone having a smooth and almost naked skin. These numerous and striking differences, even more than those of the skeleton and internal

anatomy, point to an enormously remote epoch when the race that was ultimately to develop into man diverged from that other stock which continued the animal type and ultimately produced the existing varieties of anthropoid apes.

Summary of the Animal Characteristics of Man.

The facts now very briefly summarised amount almost to a demonstration that man, in his bodily structure, has been derived from the lower animals, of which he is the culminating development. In his possession of rudimentary structures

which are functional in some of the mammalia; in the numerous variations of his muscles and other organs agreeing with characters which are constant in some apes; in his embryonic development, absolutely identical in character with that of mammalia in general, and closely resembling in its details that of the higher quadrumana; in the diseases which he has in common with other mammalia; and in the wonderful approximation of his skeleton to those of one or other of the anthropoid apes, we have an amount of evidence in this direction which it seems impossible to explain away. And this evidence will appear more forcible if we consider for a moment what the rejection of it implies. For the only alternative supposition is, that man has been specially createdthat is to say, has been produced in some quite different way from other animals and altogether independently of them. But in that case the rudimentary structures, the animal-like variations, the identical course of development, and all the other animal characteristics he possesses are deceptive, and inevitably lead us, as thinking beings making use of the reason which is our noblest and most distinctive feature, into gross error.

We cannot believe, however, that a careful study of the facts of nature leads to conclusions directly opposed to the truth; and, as we seek in vain, in our physical structure and the course of its development, for any indication of an origin independent of the rest of the animal world, we are compelled to reject the idea of "special creation" for man, as being entirely unsupported by facts as well as in the highest degree improbable.

The Geological Antiquity of Man.

The evidence we now possess of the exact nature of the resemblance of man to the various species of anthropoid apes, shows us that he has little special affinity for any one rather than another species, while he differs from them all in several important characters in which they agree with each other. The conclusion to be drawn from these facts is, that his points of affinity connect him with the whole group, while his special peculiarities equally separate him from the whole group, and that he must, therefore, have diverged from the common ancestral form before the existing types of anthropoid apes

had diverged from each other. Now, this divergence almost certainly took place as early as the Miocene period, because in the Upper Miocene deposits of Western Europe remains of two species of ape have been found allied to the gibbons, one of them, Dryopithecus, nearly as large as a man, and believed by M. Lartet to have approached man in its dentition more than the existing apes. We seem hardly, therefore, to have reached, in the Upper Miocene, the epoch of the common ancestor of man and the anthropoids.

The evidence of the antiquity of man himself is also scanty, and takes us but very little way back into the past. We have clear proof of his existence in Europe in the latter stages of the glacial epoch, with many indications of his presence in interglacial or even pre-glacial times; while both the actual remains and the works of man found in the auriferous gravels of California deep under lava-flows of Pliocene age, show that he existed in the New World at least as early as in the Old.1 These earliest remains of man have been received with doubt, and even with ridicule, as if there were some extreme improbability in them. But, in point of fact, the wonder is that human remains have not been found more frequently in pre-glacial deposits. Referring to the most ancient fossil remains found in Europe-the Engis and Neanderthal crania,-Professor Huxley makes the following weighty remark: "In conclusion, I may say, that the fossil remains of Man hitherto discovered do not seem to me to take us appreciably nearer to that lower pithecoid form, by the modification of which he has, probably, become what he is." The Californian remains and works of art, above referred to, give no indication of a specially low form of man; and it remains an unsolved problem why no traces of the long line of man's ancestors, back to the remote period when he first branched off from the pithecoid type, have yet been discovered.

It has been objected by some writers-notably by Professor Boyd Dawkins-that man did not probably exist in Pliocene times, because almost all the known mammalia of that epoch are distinct species from those now living on the earth, and that the same changes of the environment which led to 1 For a sketch of the evidence of Man's Antiquity in America, see my Natural Selection and Tropical Nature, p. 433.

the modification of other mammalian species would also have led to a change in man. But this argument overlooks the fact that man differs essentially from all other mammals in this respect, that whereas any important adaptation to new conditions can be effected in them only by a change in bodily structure, man is able to adapt himself to much greater changes of conditions by a mental development leading him to the use of fire, of tools, of clothing, of improved dwellings, of nets and snares, and of agriculture. By the help of these, without any change whatever in his bodily structure, he has been able to spread over and occupy the whole earth; to dwell securely in forest, plain, or mountain; to inhabit alike the burning desert or the arctic wastes; to cope with every kind of wild beast, and to provide himself with food in districts where, as an animal trusting to nature's unaided productions, he would have starved.1

It follows, therefore, that from the time when the ancestral man first walked erect, with hands freed from any active part in locomotion, and when his brain-power became sufficient to cause him to use his hands in making weapons and tools, houses and clothing, to use fire for cooking, and to plant seeds or roots to supply himself with stores of food, the power of natural selection would cease to act in producing modifications of his body, but would continuously advance his mind through the development of its organ, the brain. Hence man may have become truly man the species, Homo sapiens-even in the Miocene period; and while all other mammals were becoming modified from age to age under the influence of everchanging physical and biological conditions, he would be advancing mainly in intelligence, but perhaps also in stature, and by that advance alone would be able to maintain himself as the master of all other animals and as the most widespread occupier of the earth. It is quite in accordance with this view that we find the most pronounced distinction between man and the anthropoid apes in the size and complexity of his brain. Thus, Professor Huxley tells us that "it may be doubted whether a healthy human adult brain ever weighed

1 This subject was first discussed in an article in the Anthropological Review, May 1864, and republished in my Contributions to Natural Selection, chap. ix, in 1870.