PERSPECTIVES IN EVOLUTION — RITCHIE 267 



Nevertheless, bearing that warning in mind, we may gain some 

 hint from our perspective of life upon the earth. 



We look upon man, and rightly so, as the crowning glory of evo- 

 lution : stage by stage, we say, the evolution of the past has led up 

 to him; we can imagine nothing higher, evolution appears to have 

 reached its goal. 



But step back some 180 million years in our time scale to the 

 Triassic period when the great dinosaurs dominated the earth and 

 nothing higher than reptiles had been evolved. To themselves and 

 to the creatures which shared the world with them, they must have 

 seemed (if they had any self-consciousness), and indeed they were, 

 the crowning glory of creation; stage by stage the evolution of the 

 past had led up to them; nothing higher could be imagined, evolu- 

 tion appeared to have reached its goal. And that could be said by 

 their contemporaries of the highest creatures at every stage in the 

 course of 1,200 million years of evolution, just as it is said of man 

 today. A hundred million years have rolled past since the time of 

 the dinosaurs and they and all their immediate kin have disappeared 

 forever, and new and unforseen trends of life have blossomed, as they 

 have done over and over again, and have carried the story of evolu- 

 tion on to the present, when man is the dominant and highest. 



Looking back over that 1,200-million-year vista of the steady climb 

 of life upon the path of evolution, it seems presumptuous for us to 

 suppose that man, the latest newcomer, is the last word or the final 

 crowning glory amongst many, and that with his coming the great 

 steps in evolution have come to an end. Looking forward to the 

 future of life upon the earth, it seems even more presumptuous for us 

 to suppose that for the next 1,000 million years life, so surprisingly 

 inventive in the past, should be tied for all time to come to trifling 

 changes like increase of brain power or better social organization for 

 mankind. 



The truth is that we, bound by the past, can imagine nothing more, 

 but if the long vista of evolution is any clue to the future, we cannot 

 regard mankind, the crowning glory of the present, to be more than 

 a stage in life's progress and a milestone upon the path of evolution 

 toward a greater future. To think otherwise is to imagine that with 

 the coming of man, so insignificant in time, the advance and inven- 

 tiveness of evolution, steadily carried on through an unimaginable 

 vista of years in which no trace of slackening can be perceived, has 

 all but come to an end. 



It may seem to you that our perspectives have carried us far afield 

 into a future so remote that it is scarcely worthy of consideration. 

 My excuse must be that we are so accustomed to think of man as the 

 sole significant inhabitant of the world that it is worth while now 



