THE LONG ROAD 



If we once seriously undertake to solve the riddle 

 of man's origin, and go back along the Hne of his de- 

 scent, I doubt if we can find the point, or the form, 

 where the natural is supplanted by the supernatural 

 as it is called, where causation ends and miracle be- 

 gins. Even the first dawn of protozoic life in the pri- 

 mordial seas must have been natural, or it would not 

 have occurred, — must have been potential in what 

 went before it. In this universe, so far as we know 

 it, one thing springs from another; the sequence of 

 cause and effect is continuous and inviolable. 



We know that no man is born of full stature, 

 with his hat and boots on; we know that he grows 

 from an infant, and we know the infant grows from 

 a foetus, and that the foetus grows from a bit of 

 nucleated protoplasm in the mother's womb. Why 

 may not the race of man grow from a like simple 

 beginning.^ It seems to be the order of nature; it is 

 the order of nature, — first the germ, the inception, 

 then the slow growth from the simple to the com- 

 plex. It is the order of our own thoughts, our own 

 arts, our own civilization, our own language. 



In our candid moments we acknowledge the ani- 

 mal in ourselves and in our neighbors, — especially 

 in our neighbors, — the beast, the shark, the hog, 

 the sloth, the fox, the monkey; but to accept the 

 notion of our animal origin, that gives us pause. To 

 believe that our remote ancestor, no matter how 

 remote in time or space, was a lowly organized crea- 



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