The Henson Journals
Wed 19 August 1925
Volume 39, Pages 189 to 190
[189]
Wednesday, August 19th, 1925.
The facts of comparative anatomy and embryology, and the definite proofs of kinship afforded by the reactions of the blood, make it certain that the human family was derived from one of the anthropoid apes…….In fact it can confidently be assumed that the ancestors of the human family were sprung from a stem common to the ancestry of the gorilla–chimpanzee stock, after the ancestors of the orang & the gibbon had begun to differentiate from the still more primitive anthropoids….Man's ancestors certainly advanced to the stage of the giant anthropoids (in the Miocene or possibly even in the Oligocene Period) before distinctive specialisation of structure & function produced the orang, the chimpanzee, the gorilla, and man respectively from a common stock.
v. G. Elliot Smith 'Anthropology' in 'Evolution in the Light of Modern Knowledge'. P.293,4
Fawkes sends e a letter which he has received from the Bishop of Birmingham, in which he (the Bishop) writes: "I think it best that I personally should pay no attention to the E. C. U. manifesto. Naturally my paper at Oxford on 29th will reiterate my position, which as you know is [190] that of all unbiased men".
Most of the bitterness which has attended the promulgation and criticism of evolutionary theories might probably have been avoided if both parties to the dispute had been careful to remember that you neither explain what a thing is by saying how it came to be there, nor explain how it has come to be there by saying what it is.
Taylor 'Philosophy' in 'Evolution in the light of modern knowledge'. P.476
Perhaps the last assertion is somewhat overbold. In any case "unbiased" is a difficult word to allocate satisfactorily! But the less merely personal controversy the better. After writing the necessary letters, I spent the morning in reading Murray'sErasmus and Luther.
Wynne–Wilson came to lunch, and stayed on to dine and sleep. He had divers matters of business to discuss. The Westcotts came to dinner.
I received a letter from Anson Phelps Stokes, who has now become a Canon of Washington Cathedral, & wants to learn how best to make a cathedral foundation generally useful to the community.