Of the fossil remains of true prehistoric men, little need be said.  We cannot know whether the races now living in the regions where these remains are found are really the descendants of the older types, and so a direct comparison cannot be made.  It is true that the brain capacities of the man of Spy, of the Neanderthal, and of the English caverns are lower than those of modern civilized races, but the differences are not so striking and not so clearly indicative of the apelike ancestor of man as in the case of the previous comparison of Pithecanthropus with apes and men.

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The foregoing facts illustrate the conclusive evidence brought forward by science that human evolution in physical respects is true.  Even if we wished to do so, we cannot do away with the facts of structure and development and fossil history, nor is there any other explanation more reasonable than evolution for these facts.  If now we should inquire into the causes of this process, we would find again that the present study of man and men reveals their subjection to the laws of nature which accomplish evolution elsewhere in the organic world.

The fact of human variation requires no elucidation; it is as real for men as for insects and trees.  Indeed, some of the most significant facts of variation have been first made out in the case of the human species.  The struggle for existence can be seen in everyday life.  We cannot doubt its reality when scores perish annually because of their failure to withstand the extreme degrees of temperature during midwinter and midsummer; when starvation causes so many deaths, and when the incessant combat with bacterial enemies alone brings the list of casualties on the human side in our own country to more than two hundred and fifty thousand a year.  As in nature at large, the more unfit are eliminated as a result of this struggle, while the more adapted succeed.  In the long run, that particular applicant for a clerkship or any other work who may be the more fitted is the one who gets it.  While the severity of competition may be somewhat mitigated as the result of social organization, and while our altruistic charitable institutions enable many to prolong a more or less efficient existence, the struggle for existence cannot be entirely done away with.  Heredity also is a real human process, and it follows the same course as in animals at large; as in the case of variation, some of the fundamental laws of its operation have been first worked out in the case of human phenomena, and have been found subsequently to be of general application.

Reverting to the specific question as to the earliest divergence of man from the apes, we can readily see how the superior development of the ape-man’s brain gave him a great advantage over his nearest competitors, and how truly human ingenuity enabled the earliest men to employ weapons and crude instruments instead of brute force.  Thus the gap between men and apes widened more and more, as reasoning power increased through successive generations.  This is another aspect of the statement that the supreme position of man has been gained, not by superior organization in physical respects outside of the nervous system, but by the superior control of human organization by the higher organs of this system.