fossil remains of man hitherto discovered do not seem to me to take us appreciably nearer to that lower pithecoid form, by the modification of which he has probably become what he is.’[37] [Footnote 35: _Man’s Place in Nature_, Huxley, p. 157.] [Footnote 36: _Man’s Place in Nature_, Huxley, p. 157.] [Footnote 37: _Ibid._ p. 159.] But let us beware of mistaking, or even distorting, the true meaning of this, as understood by the philosophical evolutionist. It does not for a moment place the physical nature of man outside the range of the great creative law of natural selection. No arrangement of the monkeys can present us with a rational order of development, of which man is physically the latest and highest outcome. But the precursor of man, of whose actual existence no direct proof has yet arisen, is assumed, on the evidence of absolutely innumerable details, the full value of which is only to be clearly seen by experts, to have ascended, not from any anthropoid,—chimpanzee, gorilla, nor orang,—but these apes are found to form the nearest branch existing, produced by the same trunk, out of which, physically, man’s nature was, by the law of descent, evolved. That the embryological and anatomical resemblances between man and the highest apes are of a profound and striking character, no sane educated man would attempt to traverse; and that this involves close biological relationship, and proves the operation on each, of the same organic laws of development, so far as physical origin is concerned, is also certain. That there are evidences of an antiquity of the human race, as such, immensely disproportionate to that indicated in the absolutely unreliable and useless ‘received’ chronologies, it would be folly to doubt and immorality to neglect. It is evidenced by man’s works, which are shown, without question, to be of indefinitely vast antiquity; and correspond, in the main, with the works of races of men still living. It is shown by the enormous antiquity of races of men as we know them; by the vast age of languages, made evident, by a deep analysis of their structure, as sister and parent languages; as well as by the great age of even human remains. Now all this, taken in connection with the anatomical structure and embryological development of man, makes it impossible to suppose that man’s physical nature was not a product of the same great creative laws, the same vital processes, as those that gave origin to the chimpanzee or the gorilla; a slow creation, through a long line of varied life, from ‘the dust of the ground,’ the elements of the earth. There is in this relation an almost marvellous insight in David’s song:—