30 THE ORIGIN OF MAN 



And here is another extract: " We often dream of 

 falling. Those who fell out of the trees some fifty 

 thousand years ago and were killed, of course, had no 

 descendants. So those who fell and were not hurt, of 

 course, lived, and so we are never hurt in our dreams 

 of falling.'* Of course, if we were actually descended 

 from the inhabitants of trees, it would seem quite 

 likely that we descended from those that were not 

 killed in falling. But they must have been badly 

 frightened if the impression made upon their feeble 

 minds could have lasted for fifty thousand years and 

 still be vivid enough to scare us. 



If the Bible said anything so idiotic as these guessers 

 put forth in the name of science, scientists would have 

 a great time ridiculing the sacred pages, but men who 

 scoff at the recorded interpretation of dreams by Jo- 

 seph and Daniel seem to be able to swallow the amus- 

 ing interpretations offered by the Pennsylvania pro- 

 fessor. 



A few months ago the Sunday School Times quoted 

 a professor in an Illinois University as saying that the 

 great day in history was the day when a water puppy 

 crawled up on the land and, deciding to be a land 

 animal, became man's progenitor. If these scientific 

 speculators can agree upon the day they will probably 

 insist on our abandoning Washington's birthday, the 

 Fourth of July, and even Christmas, in order to join 

 with the whole world in celebrating "Water Puppy 

 Day." 



Within the last few weeks the papers published a 

 dispatch from Paris to the effect that an "eminent 



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