EVOLUTION THE RESULT OF CHEMICAL FORCES. 113 



a rapid or perhaps sudden advance in the animal organization. 

 At all events such advances have always come whenever changes 

 have occurred in vegetable growths giving a greater supply or a 

 higher grade of nourishment to the animal kingdom. 



It is a strange and 'awe-inspiring thought that on the inconceiv- 

 ably minute atoms of carbon, was impressed the power of forming, 

 in the slow progress of evolving ages, the highly organized 

 beings who would one day take in hand these infinitesimal life- 

 workers, and weigh them, and reason on them, and endeavor to 

 find out in what manner they could so accumulate their wonder- 

 ful centers of force as to build up this powerful and reasoning 

 creature. And now I would submit the question : "Which is the 

 nobler thought ; to conceive of man's exalted position in nature 

 as arising from the God-given attributes of even the lowly car- 

 bon atoms ; or to regard his origin and growth as the result of an 

 infinity of slight and * favorable variations that gave to their 

 possessors in each case the upper hand in life and enabled them 

 times without number to starve out or kill out their rivals that 

 did not possess those advantages ? To me it is not a satisfying 

 reflection that each one of our ancestors, near or remote, has 

 been the successful combatant in a deadly struggle for existence. 

 I had far rather believe that the important organic advances have 

 been made so rapidly that there has been no occasion for collisions 

 and rivalries of races. The improved orders have come upon 

 the stage of the world's progress precisely as the white men have 

 planted themselves on the lands of the dark races, and the 

 aborigines have vanished from before them imperceptibly and 

 unaccountably, as is always the case with feebler races in the 

 presence of the stronger.. 



