p. 183 | Ants or Monkeys?

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Apr 20, 1882

Ants or Monkeys?

Those scientists who have shut the Creator out of his creation, and endeavored to prove that men were evolved or developed out of mollusks and monkeys, have an exceedingly hard task to adjust matters to their theories. Lately Sir John Lubbock has been considering the ant family, and after protracted investigation declares that the "anthropoid apes" must yield the second place in the order beneath man, for his friends the "ants," must be placed there. "When we consider the habits of the ants," says he, "their social organization, their large communities, elaborate habitations, their roadways, their possession of domestic animals, and even in some cases of slaves, it must be admitted that they have a fair claim to rank next to man in the scale of intelligence."

So according to these theories it now appears that in intelligence, which is the crowning glory and special attribute of mankind, the monkey must give place to the ant. Many years ago one wise man suggested that some of the gentlemen of leisure who found time hanging heavily on their hands, would do well to "go to the ant" and "consider her ways and be wise." It seems now that the advice was exceedingly pertinent, and at last some one has taken heed to the teaching of the good old book in this respect, and has found a great deal of wisdom among the ants.

If the theory should now be started that men, after all, were developed from ants instead of from monkeys, we could point to one fact which would seem to give countenance to the theory, and that is the peculiar shape of the waist of a large proportion of the fashionable young ladies of the past and present generation, which have often been remarked as conforming in their outlines to the shape of the typical ant or wasp.

Can it be that this inclination to reduce the size of the waist is an instinctive return to ancestral forms and peculiarities? We cite this as a point well worthy of the attention of our friends, who, turning their eyes away from heaven, are hunting through earth and sea to find the origin of the human family.—Sel.