GEOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE — HAWKINS 263 



their possessors; but the struggle is ultimately unavailing. For al- 

 though the winners may crush, and perhaps even exterminate, the 

 losers in any particular rivalry, the factors that gave them victory 

 ensure their collapse. Unobtrusive types endure, but aggressive and 

 domineering types achieve success and disaster in direct proportion. 

 We can liken the course of evolution to the use of a cylinder of gas. 

 If the gas is allowed to escape slowly under control, it may bum 

 steadily, giving a feeble light, for a long time ; if it all ignites at once, 

 there is a brilliant flash, a crash, and then darkness. Such were the 

 records of Lingula and Productus^ or of the turtles and dinosaurs. 



Mental acumen is a better means to success than mere structural 

 advantage. The rapid rise and fall of hosts of mammalian types, con- 

 trasting as it does with the considerable stability of the invertebrate 

 fauna during the Cenozoic era, seems a clear illustration of the para- 

 dox of the struggle for existence, where the prize is death. 



And so once more we reach the depressing view of the human species, 

 surely the most spectacular and record-breaking winners yet evolved, 

 hastening toward the reward of victory. Insofar as it has entered the 

 lists, matching its capacity for selfish greed against the individualism 

 of other animals or of its fellows, the human race is bound by the rules 

 of the competition, and the prize is within its grasp. Man is a su- 

 premely successful animal; such success, whether involving murder 

 or not, is the precursor of suicide. 



There can be no doubt that the introduction of life marked a crisis 

 in the earth's history. Perhaps its significance can be best expressed 

 by the suggestion that to the eternal changelessness of physical laws 

 there was added the eternal changefulness of organic evolution. 

 Bound by the insensitive chains of material environment, living or- 

 ganisms possessed a sort of individuality of which they became in- 

 creasingly conscious with the improvement of their nervous mecha- 

 nism. Sensation and reaction were limited to physical and material 

 phenomena, and so were ultimately subject to the inexorable rules 

 that propelled their possessors from birth to death. 



But the nervous mechanism of mankind can transcend the sensuality 

 of the animal brain. It is perhaps not too extravagant to claim that the 

 faculty of imagination is an acquisition as far advanced beyond that 

 of sensitiveness as life is beyond nonlife. Wlien an abstract conception 

 was formulated for the first time, a man was born, and a marvelous 

 new quality introduced into the world. For imagination, though ex- 

 pressed through the medium of material and ephemeral apparatus, 

 can break the bonds of physical restraint, finding freedom and im- 

 mortality among the eternal verities. Imagination is the gateway to 

 wisdom, and an antidote to cleverness. 



The growth of the imaginative faculty has produced, or perhaps 

 can produce, a remarkable revolution ; for its most obvious result has 



