incurred the bitter wrath of Haeckel by declaring this genealogical tree to be as authentic in the eyes of a naturalist as are the fabulous pedigrees of the Homeric heroes in those of a historian." "91

The assertion of man's ape-descent is a gratuitous assumption resting on no scientific foundation. The chief argument in favor of this hypothesis, is taken from the similarity of bodily conformation found to exist between man and some lower animals. A similarity, indeed, there does exist; but that there is an absolute identity in physical construction between man and any other animal, we deny. If there are points of resemblance between the two there are also points of divergence. And this similarity proves nothing; for, as Dr. Albert Stoeckel observes: "If the bodily structure of man shows any similarity to the bodily structure of an ape, does it therefore follow that man has descended from an ape? By no means. Only then such a conclusion could be drawn, if by other empiric facts it could be proved that man could have received such a body only by having descended from an ape. But such facts do not exist."2

These scientists themselves seem to have only a half-hearted faith in their own theory. They confess to have thus far failed to discover any traces of the missing link necessary to prove man's consan- . guinity with the ape. "In conclusion, I may say," observes the candid Mr. Huxley, "that the fossil

1 Scientific Sophisms.

Der Materialismus, p. 65.

remains of man hitherto discovered, do not seem to me to take us appreciably nearer to that lower apelike form by the modification of which man has, probably, become what he is."1

Mr. Haeckel also admits that "of the hypothetical original man who developed himself from anthropoid apes, we are as yet acquainted with no fossil remains."2

And Mr. Darwin avows that there exists "the great break. in the organic chain between man and his nearest allies, which cannot be bridged over by any extinct or living species known."3

The distinguished French naturalist, De Quatrefages, declares: "In the name of scientific truth, I can affirm that we have had for ancestor neither a gorilla, nor an orang-outang, nor a chimpanzee, no more than a seal or a fish, or any other animal whatever."4

There is, indeed, an evolution always going on in the world; the oak is evolved from the acorn, and the flower from the seed. But that there is, or that there has been any transmutation from original types, we must deny. No authenticated fact can be adduced to show that one type was ever transmuted into another.

Linnæus, the greatest of botanists, says: "We reckon on just so many species as there were forms created in

1 Man's Place in Nature.

2 L. 6, p. 620.

3 The Descent of Man, Part I., C. VI.

Natural History of Man, New York, 1875, p. 87.

...

the beginning." "All the experiments of breeders and agriculturists and florists," says Sir Charles Lyell, "have never succeeded in giving origin to one new species. The hybrids which result from the union of two distinct species, are always sterile." If the naked eye could discern the germ as clearly as it does the full-grown body, it would discover the same difference between a human germ and the germ of any brute, as that which exists between them in their developed state.. "The two original germs," says Father Secchi, "of which one produces, for instance, a bird, and the other a fish, must be in the arrangement of their intrinsic parts just as different from each other, as are also the grown and fully-developed animals.”1

It is a curious illustration of the vagaries of the human mind that, while Darwin refers all living creatures, man included, to one, or at most, to a few original types, another school of philosophers has endeavored to trace the human family not to a single pair, but to different sources. Thus while error runs to both extremes, truth rests between them.

The doctrine of the specific unity of the human race excited the ridicule of the unchristian philosophers of the eighteenth century. Voltaire declared that it could be believed only by blind men, or by those that had never seen people of different races. Some writers have maintained that the stream of human life descends from two separate sources.

1 Die Grösse der Schöpfung.

Others have enumerated as many as sixteen; while Knox, the head of the American School, insisted that each nation had a distinct origin.

The Holy Scriptures, which, apart from their inspired character, are the oldest, the most authentic and trustworthy historical monuments in existence, repeatedly declare the specific unity of the human family. Now, the dictates of common sense demand that this record should stand until it is disproved by sound investigations.

The chief argument of those that suppose a plurality of the human species, rests upon the great diversity of the human family, chiefly in regard to the color of the skin, the quality of the hair, the shape of the skull, &c. These divergencies appear great in extreme points between individuals of different races. But this is not surprising, since among certain animals manifestly of the same species, there is a greater diversity than even among

men.

"As long," says Humboldt, "as attention was directed solely to the extremes in the varieties of color and form, and to the vividness of the first impression of the senses, the observer was naturally disposed to regard races rather as originally different species than as mere varieties.

In my

opinion, however, more powerful reasons can be advanced for the theory of the unity of the human race; as, for instance, in the many intermediate gradations in the color of the skin and in the form of the skull, which have been made known to us

in recent times by the rapid progress of geographical knowledge. The greater number of the contrasts which were formerly supposed to exist, have disappeared before the laborious researches of Tiedemann on the brain of negroes and of Europeans."

The existing difference among some members of the human family is easily accounted for by climate, diet, habits of life, and education.

"Although the existing races of man," says Darwin, "differ in many respects, as in color, hair, shape of skull, proportions of the body, &c., yet if their whole organization be taken into consideration, they are found to resemble one another closely in a multitude of points. Many of these points are of so unimportant and singular a nature that it is extremely improbable that they should have been independently acquired by aboriginally distinct species, or races. The same remark holds good with equal or greater force, with respect to the numerous points of mental similarity between the most distinct races of man. The American aborigines, Negroes, and Europeans differ as much from one another in mind as any three races that can be named; yet I was incessantly struck, while living with the Fuegians on board the 'Beadle,' with many little traits of character showing how similar their minds were to ours; and so it was with a full-blooded Negro with whom I happened once to be intimate. Now,

1 Cosmos, Vol. I, p. 352.