Natural Man

Concerning the when and how of the origin of man nothing positive is known. Genesis states that god made man, but as the greatest intellects of modern times doubt the existence of deity, a ready acceptance of the Mosaic account of the creation of the haman species can only take place among those who are not well qualified to weigh evidence, balance probabilities, and appraise the evidence of rival theories.
The researches of men of science lead us to the belief that the authors of the first and second chapters of Genesis were mistaken. They formulated a theory and imagined it to be a fact.
Darwin, Haeckel, Huxley, and other eminent scientists, dispute altogether the theory that man was created perfect, and in their works have proved to demonstration that the beings called men have evolved from lower organisms; that they have the same anatomical structure as the Catarrhini apes; that there is a distinct blood-relationship between them, and that they have both had a common parentage.
To establish the truth of the evolution theory, it is enough to look fairly at the facts of nature; to observe man under various aspects; to consider him in barbaric times, or in countries where he is not yet civilised; to see him in a nude condition, with nothing to cover him but a mass of hair which nature provides; to watch him in his struggle for life with his enemies, the destructive lower animals and his fellow men, and to find in the course of years that a higher form of man has evolved out of this barbaric creature.
The evolution theory accounts for the facts as they are observed in life—facts which upon any other theory are quite inexplicable. And it must not be supposed that because the theory does not give a complete explanation to all the phenomena that it therefore is not reliable. Haeckel says ( Pedigree of Man, p. 36): If we can only prove the general truth of the Darwinian theory, our idea of the origin of man from lower vertebrata follows of necessity, and we are not obliged to give a special proof as to this latter view if the general proposition is well established. That the general proposition is well established is now admitted by the most enlightened of the opponents of Darwinism. What is called the evolution theory is generally acknowledged to be removed from the region of hypothesis to that of fact.