TIME AND CHANGE 



been tremendous at times; yet I escaped it all. 

 The huge and fearful mammals of the third or Ter 

 tiary period passed me by unharmed. Eruptions 

 and cataclysms, the sinking of the land, the inun 

 dations of the sea, world-wide deformations of the 

 earth s crust, fire and ice and floods, monsters of the 

 deep and dragons of the land and the air have beset 

 my course from the first, and yet here I am, here we 

 all are, and apparently none the worse for the ap 

 palling dangers we have passed through. 



Evolution thus makes the world over for us. It 

 shows us in what a complex web of vital and far- 

 reaching relations we stand. It gives us an outlook 

 upon the past that is startling, and in some ways 

 forbidding, yet one that ought to be stimulating and 

 inspiring. If we look back with a shudder we should 

 look forward with a thrill. If the past is terrible, 

 the future is in the same degree cheering and invit 

 ing. If we came out of those lowly and groveling 

 forms, to what heights of being may we not be carried 

 by the impetus that brought us thus far? In fact, to 

 what heights has it already carried us ! 



That the hazards of the past, to many forms of 

 life, at least, have been real and no myth, is evident 

 from the vast number of forms that have been cut 

 off and become extinct; various causes, now hard 

 to decipher, have worked together to the end, such 

 228 



