am willing to accept whatever verdict may be
founded on the real facts, and I shall not appeal therefrom. But I shall
not allow my prejudice to conceal the truth, whenever it is shown to me.
It is always acceptable to my mind, and, stripped of all sophistry and
oblique conditions, it would appear the same to every mind.

That evolution is the mode by which the world was peopled, there is
little doubt, but there are many details yet unsettled as to the manner
in which this was effected. I cannot regard the matter as proven beyond
appeal that man has come from any antecedent type that was not man, nor
yet do I deny that such may be the case; but I do deny that the broad
chasm which separates man from other primates cannot be crossed on the
bridge of speech; and while this does not prove their identity or common
origin, it does show that Nature did not intend that either one should
monopolise any gift which she had to bestow. It is as reasonable to
believe that man has always occupied a sphere of life apart from that of
apes, as to believe that apes have occupied a sphere of life apart from
birds, except that the distance from centre to centre is greater between
birds and apes than that distance between apes and man. So far as any
fossil proofs contribute to our knowledge, we find no point at which the
line is crossed in either case; and the earliest traces of man's
physiological history find him distinctly man, and this history reaches
back on meagre evidence many, many centuries before historic time. Among
these earlier remains of man, we find no fossils of the Simian type to
show that he existed at that time; but at a somewhat later period we
find some remnants of the Simian type in deposits of Southern Europe;
but they are of the smaller tribes, and have been assigned to the
_Macacus_. We cannot trace the history of this genus from that to the
present time to ascertain whether they were the progenitors of apes or
not; but between this type and that of apes the hiatus is as broad as
that which intervenes between the ape and man.

That somewhere in the lapse of time all genera began, admits of no
debate; and by inversion it is plain that all generic outlines must
focus at the point from which they first diverged, and such an operation
does not indicate that man and Simian have ever been more closely allied
than they are at the present time; but the evidence is clear that man
has been evolved from a lower plane than he n