CREATION BY EVOLUTION
between ape and man is wide. Mr. Darwin, with his well-known candor in giving die fullest weight to objections against his theory, described it as “enormous,” yet in his Descent of Man he endeavors to show that the differences in mentality between man and the higher mammals are not fundamental. Like the mental differences between human beings, which are also enormous, they are differences of degree and not of kind. Consequently we may readily conceive that the human mind may have arisen by an orderly process of development from a mind of lower order.
We are not obliged, however, to regard the evolutionary origin of the human mind as merely a plausible possibility. The evidence for its evolution is much the same as the evidence for the evolution of the body. Resemblance in fundamental features of structure and in method of individual development is justifiably regarded as a strong indication of a common descent. When we compare man with a chimpanzee and note the same form of the external ear, the same rudimentary ear muscles, the same slope of the hairs on the arms and legs, and countless other similarities, even in little useless features of structure, we find the only reasonable explanation of these similarities in the conclusion that they are inherited from some common ancestor.
The same argument applies to the mind, though minds are not so well suited for detailed comparison as bodies. We think that we know something about the human mind, but most of our knowledge lacks the accuracy and precision of the subject matter of our big books on anatomy and physiology. Our knowledge of the ape mind is much less complete. Until recently no one had ever made a really systematic study of the intelligence of the higher apes. Mr. Darwin did his best to bring together the available information on the subject when he wrote his Descent of Man. He
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