Of Paleopolitics and Missing Links - The Fossil Chronicles - page 8

even as Dart often read the Bible to his two children, it had earlier been
agreed between Marjorie [Dart's second wife] and himself not to chris-
ten and register them in a particular church but, rather, to wait and allow
them to attend the Sunday school of various denominations and, eventu-
ally, join the church of preference. The couple made a strong point to
instruct the children against prejudice of certain religions be they Catholic
or Protestant, Jewish or Islam. Importantly, they took care not to promote
political or racial bias in the children's minds . 21
Like Charles Darwin, who once intended to become an English
country clergyman, and Louis Leakey, the famous paleontologist who
had youthful ambitions of becoming a missionary, Dart came to see
discrepancies between fundamentalism and facts. 22 Regardless of his
waning orthodoxy, Dart's early instruction seems to have had a positive
effect, because today he is remembered “for his dynamic character, his
unflinching forthrightness, his personal interest in and desire to help
every student . . . his infectious confidence, his encouragement of criti-
cism, even of himself . . . his keen sense of humour and his ability 'to
take it with a smile.' ” 23 Dart's personal and professional papers, which
are archived at the University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, reveal
that he was a gentle, intellectual, and private soul who retained a life-
long inquisitiveness about nature.
As Dart described it, 1914 was a “momentous year.” 24 Having received
a degree with honors in biology from the University of Queensland,
and although he was still working on a master of science degree, he
entered medical school at the University of Sydney. In light of his boy-
hood experiences with dissection, it is not surprising that Dart excelled
at human anatomy and became particularly interested in the nervous
system. In August, the British Association for the Advancement of
Science held an international congress in Sydney, which was attended
by, among other luminaries, the Australian-born Grafton Elliot Smith,
a world-renowned anatomist and anthropologist. Elliot Smith had trav-
eled from Manchester, England, where he was chair of anatomy, and
Dart recalled that he gave a “brilliant public lecture on the evolution of