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6 The Conservative *
THE TENANT.
*
I lived , one time , in the strangest house ;
I entered it some soft morn of Spring ;
I cannot remember the opening ;
But only , the birds began to sing ,
And the chambers one by one to rouse.
The frontward rang from the first and gleamed ;
The inner lay in the dark and dreamed.
Till their time should waken them too to air ;
And they wore the deepest and richest there ;
One , ovtr the rest , the mansion's throne ,
"Where all its order was framed alone.
Well , years drew over my canny house ,
And the more I noted , the more I mused ;
It wore not , but grew , forever used ,
It rallied , whenever assailed or bruised ,
In toil unbending , or gay carouse ;
And those chambers widened , as of themselves ,
The halls and arches , the vaults and shelves ;
And marvels so many the closets held ,
Such law constricted and life outwelled ,
I learned to fancy , it might rehearse ,
On a stage so little , the universe.
And ever I spent maturer care
To hold my lodging In safe repair ,
AH I strove , communing long , to find
In that fair building the builder's mind.
But the wonder at last befell my house ,
More strange than all of the vernal prime ;
It had fitted myself , that early time ;
It was not wearied with stain or grime ,
With rift orjeeling , with mould or mouse ;
But now , when so long those cares I spent
To cleanse the blemish , to heal the rent ,
1 but found , in the home I would shape so true.
More alien every year I grew.
It would not yield as before to me
The instant claim of its service free ;
It vexed mo without , it was gnawn within ,
I felt the old trusty joints unpin ,
With buttress the mouldered walls I propped ,
Door cumbered and thickening window stop
ped ;
There was ever a fall , and ever a strain
That of old I know not ; I called it Pain ;
And all my endeavor but set it clear
That I and my dwelling were not so near.
However the place mipht fix my love ,
Resistance palled ; it was time to move.
And strange again , of my house I know ,
But nought of myself , what would ensue 1
Yet stranger , the word of those who say
That the two are one , as they go or stay.
GENERAL EVOLUTION AND NATURAL
SELECTION AS EXEMPLIFIED
BY MAN.
PART III.
Darwin's work leads up to that
trauscendant question , the Evolution
of Man. There may bo said to be
three problems for solution viz :
1st. The Evolution of Man from some
lower form of animal. 2nd. The
Evolution of the different races of
mankind. 3rd. Social Evolution1. To
all these Darwin applied the principle
of natural selection , and he did not
shrink from following his theory to
the logical conclusion.
The evolution of man from a lower
form is , of course , a necessary consequence
quence of the general theory of evolu
tion. It was , no doubt , the realiza
tion of the fact that caused the attacks
upon Darwin and Huxley as soon as
' ' The Origin of Species' ' reached the
reading public.
I must explain that the theory-
evolution does not entail the descerit
pf man from any existing .ape , or
monkey , and Darwin specifically
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pointed this out. I am very sorry to
say , however , that popular opinion
still insists that mnn is a sort of edi
tion do luxe of the gorilla or the
chimpanzee. "
The truth is that man and the an
thropoid apes have descended from
some common ancestor , and that in
the course of time , and as a result of
natural and sexual selection , the
branches have diverged , the termina
tion of one branch being man , and of
others the various tail-less man-like
apes. While this common origin does
make the tail-less apes man's nearest
relatives , it does not make them his
ancestors. The relationship , however ,
is about as remote as a fiftieth cousinship -
ship , but it is not so far removed as
is the relationship between , for ex
ample , the chimpanzee and the lemur.
I am anxious to point out that ,
whatever views anybody may hold
upon religious questions , the admis
sion that man 'lias been derived from
ape-like ancestors by the process of
evolution , cannot influence those views
provided you admit as every sane
man must that the human animal
grows up by a process of development
from a fertilized ovum in exactly the
same manner as every other mammal.
I now wisli to draw attention to the
life history of man. In this case , as
in the case of the frog , there exists
the same sequence and the same con
ditions which the theory of evolution
demands. A few coincidences might
be explained as mere accidents-
the evidence , taken as a whole , is so
overwhelming that one is fully war
ranted in assorting that each organism
in the course of its embryological
history repeats in a short period the
entire history of the race.
In the embryonic history of man-and
of all other mammals there are pe
culiarities which , upon the hypothesis
of special creation , are not explain
able in the light of evolution , they
are exactly what one ought to expect.
The ova of all mammals in their
earlier phases pass through stages
which are capable of exact comparison
with those of the frog. The ovum
divides , forms the germ layers , the
nervous system , the notochord , and
the muscle-plates in the same way.
Then comes the same formation of
heart and blood-vessels. In man , as
in the fish , the heart is , at first , two-
chambered ; then it becomes three-
chambered , as in the lower reptiles ;
and later it develops the four-
chambered condition , which it retains
through life. In the blood-vessels , are
the same gill-arteries as in the frog
or shark , running in the/same direc
tion and uniting to form the same
dorsal aorta. There is the same tend
ency to form gill-slits upon the sides
of the neck , and in exactly the same
manner , as outgrowths from the
throat towards the external skin.
Later , the blood vessels change , the
gill-slits close up , except the first ,
which persists as the Eustachian
tube , connecting the throat with the
middle ear.
After a time the distinctly mam
malian features become more promi
nent and there comes a time when no
one can determine between "two em
bryos which is that of a man and
which that of a dog. Later , the two
can be distinguished ; but still there
is no apparent distinction between the
embryo of man and that _ of one of the
anthropoid apes.
Permit mo now to mention a few of
the monkey-like characteristics of the
human embryo. The great too , .in
stead of being longer than and parallel
to the others , is shorter and extends
at right angles to the axis of the foot ,
just as it does in the foot of the ape.
At the seventh month , the convolu
tions of the brain are very close to
those of Hie baboon. There is , at one
period ( thirty-first to thirty-fifth day )
a true tail extending considerably be
low the coccyx of the adult. At the
seventh month the entire body , ex
cept the palms of the hands and the
soles of the feet , is , like that of the
apes , covered with hair , the technical
name of which is lanugo , and which
is usually shed before birth. Even
after birth the monkey-like character
istics do not disappear. The young
orang-outang clings witli its hands to
the hair of its mother's breast , and
the newly-born infant , so weak in
other respects , will cling to any sur
face with sufficient grip to support its
weight. Again , if you will watch a
full-grown man , who cannot swim , in
deep water , you will notice that he
moves first one arm and then the
other the very thing he ought not to
do just as the apes move their limbs
when climbing a tree.
In structure , the differences between
man and the anthropoid apes are , 'of
course , very great , but they are differ
ences of degree rather than of kind.
None of the anthropoid apes walk
erect with ease , and their arms are
longer than are those of man. The
apes possess an apposable great toe ,
which enables them to hold on to al
most anything with their feet. Be
tween some of the teeth of both jaws
there is a space , known by the word
"diastema , " and into this space the
tooth of the opposite jaw fits.
I hesitate to say much concerning
man's brain weight because my views
upon this subject have been so persist
ently misrepresented in the past. It-
is not probable that any normal adult ,
man or woman , has over possessed a
brain weighing less than 80 ounces ;
upon the other hand , it is improbable
that any anthropoid ape has ever been
dissected whoso brain weight exceeded