230 The Bible of Nature 



plants and animals, or of prehistoric man. Louis 

 Agassiz spoke of the gap between the unicellular 

 Protists and multicellular organisms with "bod- 

 ies" as "the greatest gulf in organic nature"; how 

 was that gulf bridged ? Every zoologist believes 

 that is the proper word to use that backboned 

 animals were evolved from backboneless ances- 

 tors, but who shall say from what kind of back- 

 boneless animal, or by what steps, or under what 

 conditions? Most anthropologists believe that 

 man was, like other organisms, the long result of 

 time, that he sprang from an ape-like stock, but 

 no one knows from which, or where, or when, or 

 how. 



Riddles as to Origins. Greatest of all perhaps are 

 the riddles as to origins. There is always a good 

 deal of difficulty in starting the triumphant char- 

 iot of evolution. "Ce n'est que le premier pas 

 qui coute." 



Given the consolidate^ earth we can account 

 for its sculpturing, but how did the earth begin ? 

 Was it from a condensed nebula, how did the 

 nebula begin ? Was the nebula a swarm of collid- 

 ing meteorites, whence came they? Have the 

 different kinds of matter been evolved, what was 

 the raw material? Is matter explained away as 

 " nothing but electricity," had this an origin ? 



Given living organisms to start with, we can in 

 some measure redescribe the evolution of our 



