THE LONG ROAD 



began his existence seems to me misleading, be- 

 cause it appears to convey the idea that he began 

 as man at some time, in some place. Whereas he 

 grew. He began where and when the first cell ap- 

 peared, and he has been on the road ever since. 

 There is no point in the line where he emerged from 

 the not-man and became man. He was emerging 

 from the not-man for millions of years, and when 

 you put your finger on an animal form and say. 

 This is man, you must go back through whole geo- 

 logic periods before you reach the not-man. If Dar- 

 win is right, there is no more reason for believing 

 that the different species or forms of animal life were 

 suddenly introduced than there is for believing that 

 the soil, or the minerals, gold, silver, diamonds, or 

 vegetable mold and verdure were suddenly intro- 

 duced. 



II 



If we know anything of the earth's past history, 

 we know that the continents were long in forming, 

 that they passed through many vicissitudes of heat 

 and cold, of fire and flood, of upheaval and sub- 

 sidence — that they had, so to speak, their first 

 low, simple rudimentary or invertebrate life, that 

 they were all slow in getting their backbones, slower 

 still in clothing their rock ribs with soil and ver- 

 dure, that they passed through a sort of amphibian 

 stage, now under water, now on dry land, that 

 their many kinds of soils and climes were not differ- 



13 



