I cannot go further here into the interesting recent research in regard to special aspects of our simian descent; nor would it greatly advance our object, because all the general conclusions as to man's primate descent remain intact, whichever way we construct hypothetically the special lines of simian evolution. On the other hand, it is interesting for us to see how the most recent form of Darwinism, so happily described by Escherich as "ecclesiastical evolution," stands in regard to these great questions. What does its astutest representative, Father Erich Wasmann, say about them? The tenth chapter of his work, in which he deals at length with "the application of the theory of evolution to man," is a masterpiece of Jesuitical science, calculated to throw the clearest truths into such confusion and so to misrepresent all discoveries as to prevent any reader from forming a clear idea of them. When we compare this tenth chapter with the ninth, in which Wasmann represents the theory of evolution as an irresistible truth on the strength of his own able studies, we can hardly believe that they both came from the same pen--or, rather, we can only understand when we recollect the rule of the Jesuit Congregation: "The end justifies the means." Untruth is permitted and meritorious in the service of God and his Church. The Jesuitical sophistry that Wasmann employs in order to save man's unique position in Nature, and to prove that he was immediately created by God, culminates in the antithesis of his two natures. The "purely zoological conception of man," which has been established beyond question by the anatomical and embryological comparison with the ape, is said to fail because it does not take into account the chief feature, his "mental life." It is "psychology that is best fitted to deal with the nature and origin of man." All the facts of anatomy and embryology that I have gathered together in my _Evolution of Man_ in proof of the series of his ancestors are either ignored or misconstrued and made ridiculous by Wasmann. The same is done with the instructive facts of anthropology, especially the rudimentary organs, which Robert Wiedersheim has quoted in his _Man's Structure as a Witness to his Past_. It is clear that the Jesuit writer lacks competence in this department; that he has only a superficial and inadequate acquaintance with comparative anatomy and embryology. If Wasmann had studied the morphology and physiology of the mammals as thoroughly as those of the ants, he would have concluded, if he were impartial, that it is just as necessary to admit a monophyletic (or single) origin for the former as for the latter. If, in Wasmann's opinion, the 4,000 species of ants form a single "natural system"--that is to say, descend from one original species--it is just as necessary to admit the same hypothesis for the 6,000 (2,400 living and 3,600 fossil) species of mammals, including the human species.