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by which we can measure these successive states, a standard on 
which all men are agreed, to which we can refer our estimates of 
value? And with regard to “low” and ‘‘high.”” What is the 
base from which we start, the scale by which we are to 
measure ? 
But leaving now these abstract considerations, let us take 
some concrete examples of progress, trusting these will help us 
where philosophical definitions fail. 
The word is the common property of the politician, the 
sociologist, and the historian. And not only of the historian 
who chronicles the succession of events which make up the 
records of humanity, but of him, also, who depicts for us the 
great drama of unfolding life which preceded the advent of man 
on the globe. 
The geologist deciphering the records of that vast series of 
rocks which compose the crust of the earth becomes aware of a 
great multitude of forms of life which have passed away. He 
tells us that the deepest rocks contain only the remains of those 
animal and vegetable species which are lowest in the scale of 
being, and that as we approach the latest strata the dominant 
forms of any successive epoch are those which mark the steps in 
_ the biologists’ ascending scale of life. 
He speaks of the fierce and active Molluscs of the Silurian, 
of the armour-clad Fish of the early Devonian or the more 
perfect fish of the Permian; then of the Amphibians of the 
Carboniferous. This was a notable step in advance, for the 
land animal, whose conditions of existence are more varied than 
those of one confined to the sea, has corresponding difference of 
structure. Limbs more diverse in form, organs of nutrition 
adapted to the more complex nature of food, lungs with their 
_ myriad interstices replacing gills, the blood warmer, heart more 
complicated, senses more acute, nerves more intricate, brain 
- more developed. 
Next he passes to the huge fish-lizards of the Lias, and then 
to the great Reptiles of the Oolite, to the gigantic land lizards of 
the Wealden, to the Birds of the Cretaceous, and finally to the 
_ Marsupials and Mammals of the Tertiaries,—the gigantic pre- 
_decessors of the quadrupeds which exist to-day. 
Tracing thus the source of life from the first speck of 
_ protoplasm that was engendered in the muddy waters of primeval 
seas,—from that first combination of cells that gave a feeble 
_response, in dull unconsciousness, to the stimulus of a ray of light, 
or wave of heat, up to man, sensible to all the subtle influences 
of space and time,—how vast the interval that has been bridged ! 
g: Progress is easily discerned if we do not take into account 
_the compensation exacted for it, if we ignore the necessary 
conditions of its presence ; if we shut our eyes to the sacrifice 
s 
