The nature of the following work will be bestunderstood by a brief account of how it came to be written.During many years I collected notes on the origin ordescent of man, without any intention of publishing on thesubject, but rather with the determination not to publish,as I thought that I should thus only add to the prejudicesagainst my views. It seemed to me sufficient to indicate,in the first edition of my ‘Origin of Species,’ that by thiswork “light would be thrown on the origin of man and hishistory;” and this implies that man must be included withother organic beings in any general conclusion respectinghis manner of appearance on this earth.