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Nor should it be forgotten that those regions which are the most likely to afford remains connecting man with some extinct ape- like creature, have not as yet been searched by geologists. We have seen that man appears to have diverged from the Catarrhine or Old World division of the Simiadae, after these had diverged from the New World division.
The early descendants of this progenitor, before they had diverged to any considerable extent from each other, would still have formed a single natural group; but some of the species or incipient genera would have already begun to indicate by their diverging characters the future distinctive marks of the Catarrhine and Platyrrhine divisions. Messrs.
And as man from a genealogical point of view belongs to the Catarrhine or Old World stock, we must conclude, however much the conclusion may revolt our pride, that our early progenitors would have been properly thus designated. Haeckel has come to this same conclusion. See 'Uber die Entstehung des Menschengeschlechts, in Virchow's 'Sammlung. gemein. wissen. Vortrage, 1868, s. 61.
Both Darwin's vertebral plexus, and Herbert Spencer's "line of individuation," must begin with the lancelet and its disputed head, and end in the Catarrhine or Old World monkey. No a priori induction will ever extend this line or plexus to man.
If the anthropomorphous apes be admitted to form a natural sub-group, then as man agrees with them, not only in all those characters which he possesses in common with the whole Catarrhine group, but in other peculiar characters, such as the absence of a tail and of callosities, and in general appearance, we may infer that some ancient member of the anthropomorphous sub-group gave birth to man.
But human blood also unites without any breaking-up or disturbance with the blood of a chimpanzee; from which the inference is that man is not to be placed in a separate sub-order beside the other sub-orders of the Primates, the platyrrhine and catarrhine monkeys, not even in a distinct sub order beside the catarrhines; but is to be included with them in one zoological sub-order.
But a naturalist would undoubtedly have ranked as an ape or a monkey, an ancient form which possessed many characters common to the Catarrhine and Platyrrhine monkeys, other characters in an intermediate condition, and some few, perhaps, distinct from those now found in either group.
There can, consequently, hardly be a doubt that man is an off-shoot from the Old World Simian stem; and that under a genealogical point of view he must be classed with the Catarrhine division. This is nearly the same classification as that provisionally adopted by Mr. St. Mr.
We are far from knowing how long ago it was when man first diverged from the Catarrhine stock; but it may have occurred at an epoch as remote as the Eocene period; for that the higher apes had diverged from the lower apes as early as the Upper Miocene period is shewn by the existence of the Dryopithecus.
This classification was previously suggested by Selenka on other grounds, namely, because of the points in common in the embryonic development of the catarrhine monkeys and of man, and their common distinctiveness as contrasted with the platyrrhines. Haeckel’s Evolutionist Position.
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