Whilst we have to admit that there are great defects in the older (invertebrate) portion of our pedigree, we have all the more reason to be satisfied with the positive results of our investigation of the more recent (vertebrate) part of it. All modern researches have confirmed the views of Lamarck, Darwin, and Huxley, and they allow of no doubt that the nearest vertebrate ancestors of mankind were a series of Tertiary Primates. Particularly valuable are the admirable attempts of the two zoologists, Paul and Fritz Sarasin,[22] to throw light upon the human phylogeny by painstaking comparison of all the skeletal parts of man with those of the anthropoid apes. They have shown that among the lower races of man the primitive Veddahs of Ceylon approach the apes most nearly, and that among the latter the chimpanzee stands nearest to man. [22] 'Ergebnisse naturwissenschaftlicher Forschungen auf Ceylon,' vols. 4 and 5. (With an atlas of 84 plates; 1893.) The direct descent of man from some extinct ape-like form is now beyond doubt, and admits of being traced much more clearly than the origin of many another mammalian order. The pedigrees of the Elephants, the Sirenia, the Cetacea, and, above all, of the Edentata, for example, are much more obscure and difficult to explain. In many parts of their organization--for example, in the number and structure of his five digits and toes--man and monkeys have remained much more primitive than most of the Ungulata. The immense significance of this positive knowledge of the origin of man from some Primate does not require to be enforced. Its bearing upon the highest questions of philosophy cannot be exaggerated. Among modern philosophers no one has perceived this more deeply than Herbert Spencer.[23] He is one of those older thinkers who before Darwin were convinced that the theory of development is the only way to solve the 'enigma of the world.' Spencer is also the champion of those evolutionists who lay the greatest weight upon _progressive heredity_, or the much combated _heredity of acquired characters_. From the first he has severely attacked and criticised the theories of Weismann, who denies this most important factor of phylogeny, and would explain the whole of transformism by the 'all-sufficiency of selection.' In England the theories of Weismann were received with enthusiastic acclamation, much more so than on the Continent, and they were called 'Neo-Darwinism,' in opposition to the older conception of Evolution, or 'Neo-Lamarckism.' Neither of those expressions is correct. Darwin himself was convinced of the fundamental importance of progressive heredity quite as much as his great predecessor Lamarck; as were also Huxley and Spencer. [23] 'Principles of Biology': 'The Factors of Organic Evolution'; 'The Inadequacy of Natural Selection.'