264 Kansas Academy of Science. 



question of the origin of races, which has always been a most diffi- 

 cult one. That the great variations of mankind could have arisen 

 merely through the influence of environment, climate, food, terres- 

 trial or cosmic influences, which were tentatively offered, owing to 

 the theory of slow changes, we have been long convinced are not 

 sufficient. We now feel satisfied that the great racial variations 

 originated suddenly, by mutations, and that from "sports," so to 

 speak, the races had their origin. The mutation theory throws a 

 flood of light upon this great question, but which awaits the work- 

 ing out of the details. 



The theory accounts also for the origin of very early civilizations, 

 which we have heretofore believed must have had a slow growth 

 by natural development. We can now realize how a superior race 

 could spring into prominence, and, by unusual ability, rapidly 

 evolve a high civilization; as witness the ancient Assyrians, Egyp- 

 tians, Greeks, Romans, Peruvians, Mexicans, and others. History 

 tells us that the rise and development of such peoples were very 

 rapid, and that a very few centuries were required for them to pro- 

 gress from savagery to high civilization, and which we now know 

 must have been due to mutations — to the sudden appearance of 

 superior intellects without a previous gradual development. Mod- 

 ern nations also have arisen into intellectual prominence and ac- 

 complishments by leaps and bounds, as many examples that occur 

 at once to every one will- amply prove. At the present time we 

 need some moral mutations to correct the aberrations of conscience 

 of men in high places. 



Indeed, the idea opens up an illimitable field for speculation. 

 As a recent writer in Science well said : " Born in the womb of lower 

 animals, man has become the most wonderful living thing on earth, 

 although separated now by a great gulf from his next of kin. In- 

 experienced in his early history, his mind steadily advanced, until 

 to-day he contemplates all nature with a yearning to know its mys- 

 teries. The changes in the germ-cell sufficing to evolve him are 

 as inscrutable to his reason as the constitution of matter or the 

 interstellar space ether, or the origin, nature and the meaning of 

 life itself. But we ardently desire to know these things — to peer 

 out into unfathomable space and to speculate upon the meaning of 

 our existence and the unknowable as we perceive it all about us in 

 the universe. But as a species, sapiens, of the genus Homo, we 

 can never know. We seem to be but intellectual atoms floating in 

 an infinity of space and time." 



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