The Whence and the Whither of Man. A brief history of his origin and development through conformity to environment. Being the Morse Lectures of 1895 / by John M. Tyler.

Date:
1896
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The Whence and the Whither of Man. A brief history of his origin and development through conformity to environment. Being the Morse Lectures of 1895 / by John M. Tyler. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    the main correct. We may grant very cheerfully that we can attain no demonstration ; the most that we can claim for our results will be a high degree of proba- bility. If our conclusions are very probably correct, we shall do well to act according to them; for all our actions in life are suited to meet the emergencies of a probable but uncertain course of events. We take for granted the probable truth of the theory of evolution as stated by Mr. Darwin, and that it ap- plies to man as really as to any lower animal. At the same time it concerns our argument but little whether natural selection is “ omnipotent ” or of only secondary importance in evolution, as long as it is a real factor, or which theory of heredity or variation is the more probable. If man has been evolved from simple living sub- stance protoplasm, by a process of evolution, it mil some day be possible to write a history of that process. But have we yet sufficient knowledge to justify such an attempt? Before the history of any period can be written its events must have been accurately chronicled. Biolog- ical history can be written only when the successive stages of development and the attainments of each stage have been clearly perceived. In other words, the first prerequisite would seem to be a genealogical * tree of the animal kingdom. The means of tracing this genealogical tree are given in the first chapter, and the results in the second, third, and fourth chap- ters of this book. Now, for some of the ancestral stages of man’s de- velopment a very high degree of probability can be *Sec Phylogenetic Chart, p. 310.