Page:The Last link.djvu/41

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been validated.
FOSSIL PRIMATES
29

great and renowned pathologist has been driven to the incredible contention that all variations of organic forms are pathological.

Four years ago, as honorary president of the Anthropological Congress at Vienna, he attacked Darwinism in the severest manner, and declared that 'man may be as well descended from the elephant or from the sheep as from the ape.' Such attacks on the theory of transformism indicate a failure to understand the principles of the theory of Evolution and to appreciate the significance of palæontology, comparative anatomy, and ontogeny.

The thousands of other objections which have been made during the last forty years (chiefly by outsiders) may be passed over in silence. They do not require serious refutation. In spite of, or perhaps because of, these attacks, the theory of Evolution stands established more firmly than ever.

It is easy for the outsider to exult over the difficulties which our problem implies—diffi-