Excerpt from Three Essays on the Antiquity and Races of Man The popular but inaccurate expression of this scientific conviction is that man is descended from the monkeys, but that a link has been lost in the chain of descent: the famous missing link. In a loose way this statement re ects modern scientific Opinion; but it certainly is partly erroneous. Probably not a, single living authority maintains today that man is descended from any species of monkey now living. What students during the past sixty years have more and more come to be convinced of, was already foreshadowed by Darwina namely that man and the apes are both descended from a common ancestor. This common ancestor may be described as a primitive Primate. Who differed in a good many details both from the monkeys and from man. And who has long since become extinct. The Situation may be clarified by two diagrams. The first diagram represents the inaccurate popular View which puts the monkey at the bottom of the line of descent, man at the top, and the missing link in the middle of the straight line. The illogicality ef believing that our origin occurred in this manner is apparent as soon as one re ects that according to this scheme the monkey at the beginning and man at the end of the line still survive, whereas the missing link, which is supposed to have connected them, has become extinct. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works."