Nature of Evolutionary Progress 59 



Day humorously proposed the question ; What would 

 be the situation of life and of civilization if other 

 groups of animals had seized the advance guard of 

 development instead of the higher apes and man? 

 What would be the state of affairs if the cats or the 

 elephants had been the first to develop a large, com- 

 plex brain and had taken the lead and produced a 

 civihzation? Such questions touch real possibilities; 

 they touch what might indeed have occurred in the 

 past or might yet occur in the future. They are most 

 suggestive; they are worthy of meditation. Super- 

 cats, super-elephants, equal to or beyond present 

 mankind in mind and social organization are possi- 

 bilities of evolution. From any of the groups of 

 animals such superior creatures may or might arise. 



It is true that on earth man has the very great ad- 

 vantage of now being in possession of the advance. 

 He can head off and destroy any other type that 

 tends to overtake or obstruct him, and everything 

 indicates that he will do this in effective fashion. Evo- 

 lution toward higher types, so far as the earth is con- 

 cerned, is probably to be looked for, if at all, in man 

 rather than in any other animal. 



Yet if mankind fails, if through dissensions and 

 wars, if through his own too great multiplication and 

 through his inability to control the complex organi- 

 zation that he has produced, man at last destroys 

 himself, as some now anticipate, it is to be remem- 

 bered that the resources of the universe in the ad- 

 vancement of life are not thereby exhausted. Vast 

 areas of the universe have not yet realized their po- 



