292 COSMIC PHILOSOPHY, [pt. il 



rifles over the howitzers and flintlocks used by our grand- 

 fathers, we must also remember that more than twenty 

 thousand generations lived and died before the primitive 

 stone hatchets and stone-pointed arrows M^ere superseded 

 by battle-axes and javelins headed with bronze. During 

 these long ages, each generation must have imitated its 

 predecessor almost as closely as is the case with brute 

 animals. The godlike intellect, of whose achievements we 

 are now so justly proud, was then being acquired by almost 

 infinitely minute increments. In the face of the proved 

 fact of man's immense antiquity, no other conclusion is 

 admissible. 



I have introduced these considerations, not so much to 

 confirm the theory of the descent of man from an ape-like 

 animal, — which I regard as already sufficiently proved by the 

 evidence presented in the ninth chapter, — as to illustrate the 

 true point of view from which the evolution of humanity 

 should be regarded, In treating of the Doctrine of Evolution 

 in general, we saw it to be a corollary from the persistence of 

 force that the process of evolution, which at first goes on 

 with comparative slowness, must, owing to the multiplication 

 of effects, go on with increasing rapidity.^ We have seen, 

 besides, that those most conspicuous aspects of evolution 

 which consist in increase of definite complexity in structure 

 and function must be much more conspicuous in the more 

 compound than in the more simple kinds of evolution. In 

 illustration of these closely allied truths, we may note that 

 in all cases a long period of time elapses before any lower 

 order of evolution gives rise to a distinctly higher order. 

 Long ages must have passed before the slow integration of 

 our solar nebula into a planetary system resulted in the 

 appearance of distinctly geologic phenomena upon the 

 several planets. Again, it was a long time before geologic 



^ See above, vol. i. p. 354. This was also hinted at the close of th« 

 cna]^ter ou Life as Adjustment. 



