sier to say that man has arisen
independently, and has evolved, without relation to any animals, from
the lowest primitive form to his present isolated and dominant
position. But this would be to deny all value to classification, which
must after all be the ultimate basis of a genealogical tree. We can,
as Darwin rightly observed, only infer the line of descent from the
degree of resemblance between single forms. If we regard man as
directly derived from primitive forms very far back, we have no way of
explaining the many points of agreement between him and the monkeys in
general, and the anthropoid apes in particular. These must remain an
inexplicable marvel.

I have thus, I trust, shown that the first class of special theories
of descent, which assumes that man has developed, parallel with the
monkeys, but without relation to them, from very low primitive forms
cannot be upheld, because it fails to take into account the close
structural affinity of man and monkeys. I cannot but regard this
hypothesis as lamentably retrograde, for it makes impossible any
application of the facts that have been discovered in the course of
the anatomical and embryological study of man and monkeys, and indeed
prejudges investigations of that class as pointless. The whole method
is perverted; an unjustifiable theory of descent is first formulated
with the aid of the imagination, and then we are asked to declare that
all structural relations between man and monkeys, and between the
different groups of the latter, are valueless,--the fact being that
they are the only true basis on which a genealogical tree can be
constructed.

So much for this most modern method of classification, which has
probably found adherents because it would deliver us from the
relationship to apes which many people so much dislike. In contrast to
it we have the second class of special hypotheses of descent, which
keeps strictly to the nearest structural relationship. This is the
only basis that justifies the drawing up of a special hypothesis of
descent. If this fundamental proposition be recognised, it will be
admitted that the doctrine of special descent upheld by Haeckel, and
set forth in Darwin's _Descent of Man_, is still valid to-day. In the
genealogical tree, man's place is quite close to the anthropoid apes;
these again have as their nearest relatives the lower Old World
monkeys, and their progenitors must be sought among the less
differentiated Platyrrhin