ch prove the proposition in
question. In the first place, we find traces of a former lower state
in the customs and beliefs of all civilised nations, and in the second
place, there are proofs to show that savage races are independently able
to raise themselves a few steps in the scale of civilisation, and that
they have thus raised themselves.

In the sixth chapter of the work, Morphology comes into the foreground
once more. Darwin first goes back, however, to the argument based on the
great difference between the mental powers of the highest animals and
those of man. That this is only quantitative, not qualitative, he has
already shown. Very instructive in this connection is the reference to
the enormous difference in mental powers in another class. No one
would draw from the fact that the cochineal insect (Coccus) and the ant
exhibit enormous differences in their mental powers, the conclusion that
the ant should therefore be regarded as something quite distinct, and
withdrawn from the class of insects altogether.

Darwin next attempts to establish the SPECIFIC genealogical tree of
man, and carefully weighs the differences and resemblances between the
different families of the Primates. The erect position of man is an
adaptive character, just as are the various characters referable to
aquatic life in the seals, which, notwithstanding these, are ranked as
a mere family of the Carnivores. The following utterance is very
characteristic of Darwin ("Descent of Man", page 231.): "If man had
not been his own classifier, he would never have thought of founding
a separate order for his own reception." In numerous characters not
mentioned in systematic works, in the features of the face, in the form
of the nose, in the structure of the external ear, man resembles the
apes. The arrangement of the hair in man has also much in common with
the apes; as also the occurrence of hair on the forehead of the human
embryo, the beard, the convergence of the hair of the upper and under
arm towards the elbow, which occurs not only in the anthropoid apes, but
also in some American monkeys. Darwin here adopts Wallace's explanation
of the origin of the ascending direction of the hair in the forearm of
the orang,--that it has arisen through the habit of holding the hands
over the head in rain. But this explanation cannot be maintained when we
consider that this disposition of the hair is widely distributed among
the most different mammals, being