FOREWORD 



the sense of a superficial one. The details of 

 evolution of our eyes, ears, nostrils, mouth — these 

 are too delicate, too intricate for words of one 

 syllable. Yet to read and understand this volume 

 requires no more concentrated attention than the 

 remembrance of the highest diamond in the ninth 

 trick, or to what Steel Preferred fell in the Autumn 

 of 1914. 



I advise no Fundamentalist or Anti-Evolutionist 

 to read it, for if he have no sense of humor he will 

 not understand it, and if he have, his belief will be 

 like Dunsany's King who "was as though he never 

 had been." If with Bergson we believe that the 

 origin of laughter was cruelty, then an S. P. C. to 

 something should be formed to prevent the spec- 

 tacle of a Fundamentalist's face functioning with 

 the third eyelid of a bird, the ear-point of a deer, 

 the honorable scars of most ancient gills, and with 

 his lip-lifting muscles in full action as he sneers 

 at truth. A moment's thought of these few char- 

 acters presents a new viewpoint on what we are 

 wont to call the "lower" animals, for if our third 

 eyelid were more than a degenerate flap we, like 

 an eagle, could look straight at the sun ; if our ears 



could straighten and turn as once, the lives of 



iv 



