THE WORM STRIVING TO BE MAN 



achieved thousands of centuries ago, but his full 

 mental and spiritual evolution is not yet. 



I think of his physical evolution as completed 

 when he assumed the upright attitude or passed 

 from a quadruped to a biped, which must of itself 

 have been a long, slow process. Probably our whole 

 historic period would form but a fraction of this 

 cycle of unrecorded time. Man s complete emer 

 gence from the lower orders, so that he stood off in 

 sharp contrast to them in his physical form probably 

 occurred in later Tertiary times, and what the mean 

 ing of this stretch of time is in human years we can 

 only conjecture. During this cycle of numberless 

 millenniums till the dawn of history, man s develop 

 ment was mainly mental. He left the brute crea 

 ture behind because his mind continued to develop 

 after his physical form was complete, while the brute 

 stood still. Whence the impulse that sent man for 

 ward? Why was one animal form endowed with the 

 capacity for endless growth and development, and 

 all the others denied it? Ah! that is the question of 

 questions. Compared with the development of his 

 bodily powers, man s mental and spiritual growth 

 has been very rapid. He seems to have been mil 

 lions of years in getting his body, while he has been 

 only millenniums in getting his reason and intelli 

 gence. What progress since the dawn of history! 

 Compare the Germans of the time of Tacitus, or the 

 Gauls of the time of Caesar, or the Britons of the 

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