TIME AND CHANGE 



is easy to believe that the baby is born of woman, 

 because it is a matter of daily experience, but it is 

 not easy to believe that man is born of the animal 

 world below him, and that that is born of inorganic 

 Nature, because the fact is too big and tremendous. 



What we call Nature works in no other way; one 

 law is over big and little alike. What Nature does 

 in a day typifies what she does in an eternity. It is 

 when we reach the things done on such an enormous 

 scale of time and power and size that we are helpless. 

 The almost infinitely slow transformations that the 

 theory of evolution demands balk us as do the size 

 and distance of the fixed stars. 



No observation or study of evolution on a small 

 scale and near at hand in the familiar facts of the 

 life about us can prepare us for it, any more than lake 

 and river can prepare us for the ocean, or the model 

 ing of miniature valleys and mountains by the rain 

 in the clay bank can open our minds to receive the 

 tremendous facts of the carving of the face of the 

 continent by the same agents. 



We do not see evolution working in one day, or in 

 a century, or in many centuries. Neither do we 

 catch the gods of erosion at their Herculean tasks. 

 They always seem to be having a holiday, or else to 

 be merely toying with their work. 



When we see a mound of earth or a bank of clay 

 worn into miniature mountain-chains and canons 

 and gulches by the rains of a season, we do not 

 182 



