THE LONG ROAD 



If we once seriously undertake to solve the riddle 

 of man s origin, and go back along the line of his de 

 scent, I doubt if we can find the point, or the form, 

 where the natural is supplanted by the supernatural 

 as it is called, where causation ends and miracle be 

 gins. Even the first dawn of protozoic life in the pri 

 mordial seas must have been natural, or it would not 

 have occurred, must have been potential in what 

 went before it. In this universe, so far as we know 

 it, one thing springs from another; the sequence of 

 cause and effect is continuous and inviolable. 



We know that no man is born of full stature, 

 with his hat and boots on; we know that he grows 

 from an infant, and we know the infant grows from 

 a foetus, and that the foetus grows from a bit of 

 nucleated protoplasm in the mother s womb. Why 

 may not the race of man grow from a like simple 

 beginning? It seems to be the order of nature; it is 

 the order of nature, first the germ, the inception, 

 then the slow growth from the simple to the com 

 plex. It is the order of our own thoughts, our own 

 arts, our own civilization, our own language. 



In our candid moments we acknowledge the ani 

 mal in ourselves and in our neighbors, especially 

 in our neighbors, the beast, the shark, the hog, 

 the sloth, the fox, the monkey; but to accept the 

 notion of our animal origin, that gives us pause. To 

 believe that our remote ancestor, no matter how 

 remote in time or space, was a lowly organized crea- 



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