THE LINEAGE OF MAN
remote “common ancestor” of perhaps ten million years ago was a tailless, partly tree-living, pro-anthropoid, in many respects far more like a young female chimpanzee than like a modern white man.
Conclusion
The natural egotism of man made him easily credulous of the story that the first man, although made from the dust of the ground, was also created perfect in the image of God. The knowledge that man has struggled upward to his present estate from less intelligent animals is still practically denied to the majority of mankind.
The gospel of evolution as outlined above is not the writer’s invention; it has not been built up, like early systems of religion, in an endeavor to propitiate the gods without; it is simply a very condensed outline of what Nature is gradually revealing to those who carefully examine her records. When man fully realizes what he has come from and the long, slow steps by which he has reached his present condition, he will be better able to apply intelligent measures toward correcting his infirmities and toward guiding his evolution along profitable paths in the future. One can do no better than quote the noble words of Charles Darwin:
We must, however, acknowledge, as it seems to me, that man, with all his noble qualities, with sympathy which feels for the most debased; with benevolence which extends not only to other men but to the humblest living creature; with his god-like intellect, which has penetrated into the movements and constitution of the solar system—with all these exalted powers—man still bears in his bodily frame the indelible stamp of his lowly origin.
REFERENCES
- Barrell, Joseph. Rhythms and the Measurements of Geologic Time. Bull. Geol. Soc. Amer., Vol. 28, pp. 745–904, Pls. 43–46. December 4, 1917.
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