Man in the Light of Evolution 



I travel toward the mountain, and am carried 

 to the top by a railroad. Clouds have settled 

 and have obscured my view. Yet when I look 

 down from the summit in the clearer light of 

 the next morning, I do not need to trace the 

 whole line of the road in all its turnings to 

 know that I have passed from a smiling valley 

 to forests and pastures, thence to bare treeless 

 rock, and finally over ice and snow. I must have 

 passed these landscapes successively, for they He 

 In zones encircling the mountain. 



With almost equal certainty I can say that 

 man in his evolution passed successively through 

 unicellular, vegetative or coelenterate, wormlike, 

 and vertebrate stages. These stages stand out 

 separate and disconnected In our hasty sketch. 

 Let us see if their succession is not entirely logi- 

 cal and exactly what we might expect. 



We begin with the marvelous living substance 

 — protoplasm. It digests, breathes, excretes, 

 feels, adapts Itself to the most varied conditions. 

 Its most noticeable characteristic Is its power of 

 adaptation. Its fitsomeness, as Professor Brooks 

 has emphasized. Whence and how did It arise? 

 I, at least, have no theory to offer. Gradually 

 it fashioned the cell, a still more marvelous 



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