Produced by Marilynda Fraser-Cunliffe, Carla Foust, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net Transcriber's note Printer errors have been changed and are listed at the end. All other inconsistencies are as in the original. MAN AND HIS ANCESTOR _A STUDY IN EVOLUTION_ BY CHARLES MORRIS AUTHOR OF "CIVILIZATION: AN HISTORICAL REVIEW OF ITS ELEMENTS," "THE ARYAN RACE," ETC. New York THE MACMILLAN COMPANY LONDON: MACMILLAN AND CO., LTD. 1900 _All rights reserved_ COPYRIGHT, 1900, BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. Norwood Press J. S. Cushing & Co.--Berwick & Smith Norwood Mass. U.S.A. PREFACE It would be difficult to find any intelligent person in this age of the world who has not some theory or opinion in regard to the origin of man, and perhaps almost as difficult to find any such person who can give a good and sufficient reason for the faith that is in him. This is especially the case with those who look upon man as a product of evolution, a natural outgrowth from the world of lower life, since here simple faith or ancient authority is not sufficient, as in the creation hypothesis, but scientific evidence and logical argument are necessary. It is to enable this class of readers to test the quality and sufficiency of their belief that this book has been prepared. The question of the evolutionary origin of man has been by no means neglected by recent authors, yet it has been dealt with chiefly as a side issue in works of a more extended purpose, and largely in technical language, simple to the scientist, but difficult to the general reader. The only work that makes this subject its leading theme, Darwin's "Descent of Man," adds to it a still longer treatise on "Sexual Selection," so that the subject of man's evolutionary origin cannot be said to have been yet dealt with for itself alone. Darwin's work, moreover, is now nearly thirty years old, and to this extent antiquated, while at best it cannot be considered as well suited for general reading. These considerations have given rise to the present work, in which an effort has been made to present the subject of man's origin in a popular manner, to dwell on the various significant facts that have been discovered since Darwin's time, and to offer certain lines of evidence never before presented in this connection, and which seem to add much strength to the general argument.