THE LONG ROAD 



directing our attention to common near-at-hand 

 facts for the key to remote and mysterious occur- 

 rences. 



It seems to me that evolution adds greatly to the 

 wonder of life, because it takes it out of the realm of 

 the arbitrary, the exceptional, and links it to the se- 

 quence of natural causation. That man should have 

 been brought into existence by the fiat of an omni- 

 potent power is less an occasion for wonder than 

 that he should have worked his way up from the 

 lower non-human forms. That the manward im- 

 pulse should never have been lost in all the appalling 

 vicissitudes of geologic time, that it should have 

 pushed steadily on, through mollusk and fish and am- 

 phibian and reptile, through swimming and creeping 

 and climbing things, and that the forms that con- 

 veyed it should have escaped the devouring mon- 

 sters of the earth, sea, and air till it came to its full 

 estate in a human being, is the wonder of wonders. 



In like manner, evolution raises immensely the 

 value of the biological processes that are every- 

 where operative about us, by showing us that these 

 processes are the channels through which the crea- 

 tive energy has worked, and is still working. Not in 

 the far-off or in the exceptional does it seek the key 

 to man's origin, but in the sleepless activity of the 

 creative force, which has been pushing onward and 

 upward, from the remotest time, till it has come to 

 full fruition in man. 



3 



