TIME AND CHANGE 



That the apparently bhnd groping and experi- 

 mentation which mark the course of evolution as re- 

 vealed by palaeontology — the waste, the delay, the 

 vicissitudes, the hit-and-miss method — should have 

 finally resulted in this supreme animal, man, puts 

 our scientific faith to the test. In the light of evo- 

 lution how the halo with which we have surrounded 

 our origin vanishes! 



Man has from the earliest period believed himself 

 of divine origin, and by the divine he has meant 

 something far removed from this earth and all its 

 laws and processes, something quite transcending 

 the mundane forces. He has invented or dreamed 

 myths and legends to throw the halo of the excep- 

 tional, the far removed, the mystical, or the divine 

 around his origin. He has spurned the clod with his 

 foot; he has denied all kinship with bird and beast 

 around him, and looked to the heavens above for the 

 sources of his life. And then unpitying science comes 

 along and tells him that he is under the same law as 

 the life he treads under foot, and that that law is 

 adequate to transform the worm into the man; that 

 he, too, has groveled in the dust, or wallowed in the 

 slime, or fought and reveled, a reptile among rep- 

 tiles; that the heavens above him, to which he turns 

 with such awe and reverence, or such dread and fore- 

 boding, are the source of his life and hope in no other 

 sense than they are the source of the life and hope 

 of all other creatures. But this is the way of science; 



178 



