" THE WORM STRIVING TO BE MAN " 



WHEN our minds have expanded sufficiently 

 to take in and accept the theory of evo- 

 lution, with what different feelings we look upon 

 the visible universe from those with which our fa- 

 thers looked upon it! Evolution makes the universe 

 alive. In its light we see that mysterious potency 

 of matter itself, that something in the clod under 

 foot that justifies Emerson's audacious line of the 

 "worm striving to be man." We are no longer the 

 adopted children of the earth, but her own real off- 

 spring. Evolution puts astronomy and geology in 

 our blood and authenticates us and gives us the 

 backing of the whole solar system. This is the re- 

 demption of the earth : it is the spiritualization of 

 matter. 



In imagination stand off in vacant space and see 

 the earth rolling by you, a huge bubble with all its 

 continents and seas and changing seasons and count- 

 less forms of life upon it, and remember that you are 

 looking upon a great cosmic organism, pulsing with 

 the vital currents of the universe, and that what 

 it holds of living forms were not arbitrarily imposed 



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