190 THE MEANING OF EVOLUTION 



from humble conditions to be the glory of our heroes; 

 we esteem it an added charm in their strength that 

 they should have developed from untoward surround- 

 ings. It is not a disgrace to man to have descended 

 from the apes. It is to the glory of man that he 

 should have ascended from forms not much more 

 promising-looking than the apes of to-day. We must 

 repeat, however, that the apes were the unprogressive 

 members, and hence we must not judge man's ances- 

 tors too harshly. It must have been in them to rise. 

 But the great glory in the thought of the humble 

 ancestry lies in the possibilities of his future. If out 

 of a creature not materially unlike the gibbering ape 

 of to-day there should have come, under the guiding 

 hand of an Almighty God, creatures with the endow- 

 ments and capabilities of man of to-day, then this is 

 only an earnest and foretaste of that which may be 

 expected in the future. A time will come when man 

 shall have risen to heights as far above anything he 

 now is as to-day he stands above the ape. Even 

 then there seems no end. With Infinite Power as the 

 agent, and limitless time in which to work, man would 

 be limiting God to an extent unwarranted by the his- 

 tory of the past to imagine that His process had 

 stopped to-day, and that man, with his many imper- 

 fections of body, of mind, and of morals, should be 

 the best that is yet to come. There cling to him still 



