When you go back to the beginning man was simply an animal, without the higher senses, as we call them.

He was simply a brute, living in trees or in caves.

Afterwards he grew into the thing we all know.

But why not imagine a throw-back into the earlier instincts?
Why not imagine the creature devoid of the impulses of mind, the thing which we call man, and see the splendid animal?
You saw in Dan Barry simply a biological sport--the freak--the thing which retraces the biological progress and comes close to the primitive.

But of course you could not realise this.
He seemed a man, and you accepted him as a man.