PEDIGREE OF GORILLA 23

In these comparisons with the human skeleton,
in this ‘stating of the animal kingdom in the terms of
man, it should be borne in mind that we are only
dealing with anatomical facts, and that it is not im-
plied, as the ignorant suppose, that man is descended
from any of the existing chimpanzees or gorillas or
orangs or gibbons. No one, indeed, ever said so, the
statement having been put about by heated dis-
putants in their attempts to destroy the unwelcome
by mere derision. The pedigree of the Homznide
must be taken back for an enormous period of time
before it touches the crossways whence that of the
man-like apes diverged fromit. But those crossways
it unmistakably reaches. Man is so intimately con-
nected, as far as his bodily structure goes, with the
higher apes that, as Mr. Lydekker says in 7ze
Royal Natural History, ‘in this respect at least he
cannot but be considered to have had a similar
origin.’ There is really no fundamental distinction
in anatomy between any member of the man-like
group, and they can only be regarded as diverging
branches from some ancestral form long since extinct,
as much unlike any living ape as such apes are un-
like man.

Of course, much depends on what is meant by
man, but in a zoological sense the Homznzd@ seem to
have been distinct from the Szszz¢de for at least as
long ago as the Miocene period of the earth’s exist-
ence.. This, it need hardly be said, has nothing to do
with the spiritual nature, nor even with the mental
powers and other human attributes, which so far
remove man from the brutes. ‘Viewed from the