68 Proceedings of Indiana Academy of Science. 
just what is enfolded within that germ? Whether it is the germ of a horse, 
a dog, a monkey, or a man, life makes no departure from the plan it finds 
traced in that germ, except in the way of development and improvement. 
For instance, when the germ is that of a horse .has not the finished 
product been at all times unmistakably a horse? Is not the Echippus as 
certainly a horse as is the thoroughbred of today. True, some of the toes of 
the Hohippus, with their several toenails, have disappeared under the one 
big toenail we call a hoof, but do not the vestiges of the submerged toes 
remain to tell their story? 
I have watched with interest the zeal with which the search has been 
prosecuted for the missing link that it is said will confirm our Simian 
ancestry, and have wondered why, if this is true, nature neglected to 
preserve some vestige of our lost caudal ornament,—some hint of the miss- 
ing vertebral attachment. I have wondered if it were not possible that 
instead of all forms of life having developed from a single germ, that nature 
had not exhausted itself in producing one type of germ, but instead had been 
capable of producing and had produced innumerable germs, so that each 
separate type of organic life may have had its start in its own particular 
germ. I know it often happens that men, in delving into their genealogy, 
encounter disagreeable surprises. It may be true that we are only improved 
monkeys (with apologies to some monkeys for some men). But if nature 
did not exhaust itself when it produced the initial germ, may it not be after 
all that the germ from which we are descended was from its beginning a 
germ of humanity? ‘ 
Evolution must be accepted, but not necessarily the mere guesses of the 
evolutionist. As long as it is a mere matter of guessing, I claim the right to 
guess for myself. It takes more than the Neanderthal man, or the so-called 
Ape Man of Java. to make valid the guess of our Simian ancestry. The 
beginning of mankind on earth doubtless goe; back to an initial germ, but 
it is my guess that the plan traced in that initial germ by the master 
architect, and which was followed by the master builder, life, was always 
man, Man, as man, has developed and is developing, but I decline to 
acknowledge kinship with either the mighty Saurian, the equivocal Simian, 
or the lowly earthworm, 
And now I yenture one other guess: Protoplasm is not life, nor is it 
any part of life. It is simply the conductor of life. It is the vehicle through 
which life acts and with which it works. 
All this of course deals only with the visible, physical world, and the 
visible, physical universe,—the world and the universe of Pphantasmagoria, 
of visible, changing, but transient forms.—forms which are simply the 
effects of causes beyond our ken. It is another story that deals with that 
other world, where consciousness dwells, that real but invisible world of 
‘auses and of realities. 
