id proofs must
be met by something more than empty and unsupported assertions. Yet
during the two years through which this preposterous controversy has
dragged its weary length, Professor Owen has not ventured to bring
forward a single preparation in support of his often-repeated
assertions.
"The case stands thus, therefore:--Not only are the statements made by
me in consonance with the doctrines of the best older authorities,
and with those of all recent investigators, but I am quite ready to
demonstrate them on the first monkey that comes to hand; while Professor
Owen's assertions are not only in diametrical opposition to both old
and new authorities, but he has not produced, and, I will add, cannot
produce, a single preparation which justifies them."
I now leave this subject, for the present.--For the credit of my
calling I should be glad to be, hereafter, for ever silent upon it. But,
unfortunately, this is a matter upon which, after all that has occurred,
no mistake or confusion of terms is possible--and in affirming that the
posterior lobe, the posterior cornu, and the hippocampus minor exist in
certain Apes, I am stating either that which is true, or that which
I must know to be false. The question has thus become one of personal
veracity. For myself, I will accept no other issue than this, grave as
it is, to the present controversy.
End of On the Relations of Man to the Lower Animals.
ON SOME FOSSIL REMAINS OF MAN.
I have endeavoured to show, in the preceding Essay, that the ANTHROPINI,
or Man Family, form a very well defined group of the Primates, between
which and the immediately following Family, the CATARHINI, there is, in
the existing world, the same entire absence of any transitional form or
connecting link, as between the CATARHINI and PLATYRHINI.
It is a commonly received doctrine, however, that the structural
intervals between the various existing modifications of organic beings
may be diminished, or even obliterated, if we take into account the long
and varied succession of animals and plants which have preceded those
now living and which are known to us only by their fossilized remains.
How far this doctrine is well based, how far, on the other hand, as our
knowledge at present stands, it is an overstatement of the real facts of
the case, and an exaggeration of the conclusions fairly deducible from
them, are points of grave importance, but into the discussion of which
I do not,
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