PART I. 



EVOLUTION, PAST AND PRESENT. 



CHAPTER I. 



NATURE AND SCOPE OF EVOLUTION. 

 Early Speculation Regarding Nature and Man. 



FROM time immemorial philosophers and stu- 

 'dents of nature have exhibited a special interest 

 in all questions pertaining to the origin of man, of 

 the earth on which he lives and of the universe to 

 which he belongs. The earliest speculations of our 

 Aryan forefathers were about the beginnings of 

 things. Questions of cosmology, as we learn from 

 the tablets preserved in the great library of Assur- 

 banipal in Nineveh, received their meed of attention 

 from the sages of ancient Assyria and Babylonia. 

 And long before Assyria, Babylonia and Chaldea had 

 reached the zenith of their power, and before they 

 had attained that intellectual eminence which so 

 distinguished them among the nations of the ancient 

 world, the peoples of Accad and Sumer had raised 

 and discussed questions of geogony and cosmogony. 

 They were a philosophical race, these old Accadians 

 and Sumerians, and, as we learn from the records 

 which are constantly being exhumed in Mesopotamia, 



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