PROOFS OF EVOLUTION.* 



Emerson says: "Beware when the great God lets loose 

 a thinker on this planet. Then all things are at risk." This 

 laconic saying has been more than verified within the last 

 thirty years. The thinkers have been holding high carnival ; 

 — and all about a little protoplasmic cell that none of them 

 could see with the naked eye. 



Two great questions have always been before the world : 

 one, as to the beginning of all things ; the other, as to the 

 end of all things. Concerning these two ])roblenis, man}' 

 sacred books have been written, from which a dozen great 

 religious systems have sprung, all setting forth, more or less 

 minutely, theories of the genesis of mind and matter. The 

 explanations thus given, though crude and barbarous in many 

 of their features, have been generally accepted, and the races 

 of men have shaped their earthly" careers in accordance there- 

 with. Now and then a splendid soul arose and denied the 

 truth of these assumed revelations ; but he rarely lived to 

 repeat the denial. 



For ages men were content merely to know how to utilize 

 the simplest forces of nature, to learn how to do the common- 

 est things, and to join in communities for pleasure and j)r<)- 

 tection. They thought all things were made out of hand by 

 a Supreme Architect who directed momentarily and minutely 

 all human alfairs. Fear and wonder made all their gods, and 

 love and hope supplied them with the beautiful belief in 

 immortality. 



Although the martyrs of truth fell one by one, each left a 

 germinal thought behind. Only within the present genera- 

 tion has it become safe and reputable to think. Hardly is 

 this even now the exact truth; for the "Descent of Man'" 

 was at first hailed with good natured laughter and gentle 

 derision ; it was a good drawing-room joke at the expense 

 of the monkey tribe. Even at the present moment, the vast 

 majority of the people smile broadly whenever the subject 



* Copyright, 1889, hy The New Ideal PuMisliiiifi Co. 



