this "Progonotaxis hominis," which has no support
from fossil evidence, comprises three groups: (i) Protista (unicellular
organisms, 1-5: (ii) Invertebrate Metazoa (Coelenteria 6-8, Vermalia
9-11): (iii) Monorrhine Vertebrates (Acrania 12-13, Cyclostoma 14-15).
The second half, which is based on fossil records, also comprises three
groups: (iv) Palaeozoic cold-blooded Craniota (Fishes 16-18, Amphibia
19, Reptiles 20: (v) Mesozoic Mammals (Monotrema 21, Marsupialia 22,
Mallotheria 23): (vi) Cenozoic Primates (Lemuridae 24-25, Tailed Apes
26-27, Anthropomorpha 28-30). An improved and enlarged edition of this
hypothetic "Progonotaxis hominis" was published in 1908, in my essay
"Unsere Ahnenreihe". ("Festschrift zur 350-jahrigen Jubelfeier der
Thuringer Universitat Jena". Jena, 1908.)

If I have succeeded in furthering, in some degree, by these
anthropological works, the solution of the great problem of Man's place
in nature, and particularly in helping to trace the definite stages in
our ancestral series, I owe the success, not merely to the vast progress
that biology has made in the last half century, but largely to the
luminous example of the great investigators who have applied themselves
to the problem, with so much assiduity and genius, for a century and
a quarter--I mean Goethe and Lamarck, Gegenbaur and Huxley, but, above
all, Charles Darwin. It was the great genius of Darwin that first
brought together the scattered material of biology and shaped it into
that symmetrical temple of scientific knowledge, the theory of descent.
It was Darwin who put the crown on the edifice by his theory of natural
selection. Not until this broad inductive law was firmly established was
it possible to vindicate the special conclusion, the descent of man from
a series of other Vertebrates. By his illuminating discovery Darwin
did more for anthropology than thousands of those writers, who are
more specifically titled anthropologists, have done by their technical
treatises. We may, indeed, say that it is not merely as an exact
observer and ingenious experimenter, but as a distinguished
anthropologist and far-seeing thinker, that Darwin takes his place among
the greatest men of science of the nineteenth century.

To appreciate fully the immortal merit of Darwin in connection with
anthropology, we must remember that not only did his chief work, "The
Origin of Species", which opened up a new era in natural history in
1859, sustain the mos