The Passing of Evolution
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that man was descended from any species of existing apes; but he always spoke of our supposed ancestor as “ape-like,” a form, from which the apes were supposed to have varied in one direction as far as man had in another. All efforts, however, to find traces of such connecting links as this theory supposes have failed. The Neanderthal skull was, accord- ing to Huxley, capacious enough to hold the brain of a phi- losopher. The Pithecanthropus Erectus of Du Bois had, as already remarked, the erect form of a man; in fact, was a man. The skeletons of prehistoric man so far as yet un- earthed, differ no more from present races of men than ex- isting races and individuals differ from each other. In short, everything points to the unity of the human race, and to the fact that, while built on the general pattern of the higher animals associated with him in the later geological ages, he differs from them in so many all-important particu- lars, that it is necessary to suppose that he came into ex- istence as the Bible represents, by the special creation of a single pair, from whom all the varieties of the race have sprung. I t is important to observe, furthermore, in this connection, that the progress of the human race has not been uniformly upward. In fact the degeneration of races has been more con- spicuous than their advancement; while the advancement has chiefly been through the influence of outside forces. The early art of Babylonia and Egypt was better than the later. The religious conceptions of the first dynasties of Egypt were higher than those of the last. All the later forms of civ- ilization shine principally by borrowed light. Our own age excels, indeed, in material advancement. But for art and literature we fall far below the past, and for our best re- ligion we still go back to the Psalm Singers and Prophets of Judaea, and to the words of Him who spake “as never man spake.” Democracy has no guides whom it dares trust im- plicitly. We have much reason to fear that those we are fol-
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