EVOLUTION OF TEE HUMAN FORM. 503 



unknown millions of years it has had to do with forms innumerable, 

 a great battle going on in which myriads of unlike combatants were 

 pitted against one another, each species being produced in such multi- 

 tudes as to give it the fullest opportunity to sustain itself if capable. 

 At every stage of the conflict the best adapted forms crowded down or 

 annihilated their inferior competitors; themselves to be similarly dealt 

 with when some new and superior combatant appeared. One needs 

 only to look down the long record of paleontology, and consider that 

 this represents only unit survivors of untold myriads, to recognize that 

 nature has dealt with a superabundance of material, and to conceive 

 that the final result may have been inevitable rather than fortuitous. 



If we attempt to review the course of organic evolution upon the 

 earth, we find ourselves confronted with so many types of life, so great 

 a diversity of forms, such varied methods of motion and degrees of 

 activity, that it is quite out of the question to deal with the subject 

 adequately in a brief space. We can simply glance at it here, as an 

 attempt to follow the whole line of progress would lead us too far 

 afield. 



Taking organic evolution as a process of colloid cell development — 

 in distinction to the inorganic crystal development — we meet with a 

 probably very long period of pristine evolution in which a single cell 

 composed the whole organism. From this period examples indicating 

 perhaps nearly the whole process of evolution still survive. The pos- 

 sibilities of progress in this direction were apparently very fully tried 

 before organisms composed of a number of cells appeared. But when 

 these came they quickly showed their superiority to the single-celled 

 type alike in size and in complexity of organization. 



From the basic generalized condition of living substance two great 

 organic kingdoms arose, the fixed and the moving forms, plants and 

 animals, the one living upon inorganic, the other upon organic mate- 

 rial. Between these two inevitable resultants of the nutrient condi- 

 tions the question of comparative rank is self-evident, the animal takes 

 precedence of the plant. But the development of the latter was only in 

 a minor degree due to inorganic influences. In water, where the ani- 

 mal assault on plants is not great nor varied, their evolution has been 

 small. On land, where it has been severe and diversified, plant evolu- 

 tion has been large. But in no instance has it advanced from the 

 purely physical to the conscious stage. 



It is to the metazoa that we must go for the higher stages of evolu- 

 tion. Of the varied phases of this type of life, we can refer only to 

 those of general character. No matter upon what planet life may have 

 originated, we can not well avoid the conclusion that it must have had 

 the organic cell as its unit, and that everywhere in its upward progress 

 the many-celled self-moving form, feeding upon organic nutriment. 



