m
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 progression 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.

[Illustration: FIG. 37.--Chimpanzee (Troglodytes niger).]

_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 created--that 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;