THE LIVING ORGANISM 9 



ment of natural order. And because it has followed 

 the method of common sense, science asserts that 

 changes have taken place, that they are now taking 

 place, and furthermore that it is unnecessary to appeal 

 to other than everyday processes for an explanation 

 of the present order of things. 



Wherever we look we see evidence of nature's change ; 

 every rain that falls washes the earth from the hills 

 and mountains into the valleys and into the streams 

 to be transported somewhere else; every wind that 

 blows produces its small or greater effect upon the face 

 of the earth ; the beating of the ocean's waves upon 

 the shore, the sweep of the great tides, these, too, 

 have their transforming power. The geologists tell us 

 that such natural forces have remodeled and recast the 

 various areas of the earth and that they account for the 

 present structure of its surface. These men of science 

 and the astronomers and the physicists tell us that in 

 some early age the world was not a solid globe, with 

 continents and oceans on its surface, as now ; that it 

 was so very hot as to be semi-fluid or semi-solid in con- 

 sistency. They tell us that before this time it was still 

 more fluid, and even a mass of fiery vapors. The earth's 

 molten bulk was part of a mass which was still more vast, 

 and which included portions which have since condensed 

 to form the other bodies of the solar system, Mars 

 and Jupiter and Venus and the rest, while the sun 

 remains as the still fiery central core of the former 

 nebulous materials, which have undergone a natural 

 history of change to become the solar system. The 

 whole sweep of events included in this long history is 

 called cosmic evolution ; it is the greater and more inclu- 



