THE WORM STRIVING TO BE IVIAN 



achieved thousands of centuries ago, but his full 

 mental and spiritual evolution is not yet. 



I think of his physical evolution as completed 

 when he assumed the upright attitude or passed 

 from a quadruped to a biped, which must of itself 

 have been a long, slow process. Probably our whole 

 historic period would form but a fraction of this 

 cycle of unrecorded time. Man's complete emer- 

 gence from the lower orders, so that he stood off in 

 sharp contrast to them in his physical form probably 

 occurred in later Tertiary times, and what the mean- 

 ing of this stretch of time is in human years we can 

 only conjecture. During this cycle of numberless 

 millenniums till the dawn of history, man's develop- 

 ment was mainly mental. He left the brute crea- 

 ture behind because his mind continued to develop 

 after his physical form was complete, while the brute 

 stood still. Whence the impulse that sent man for- 

 ward .^^ Why was one animal form endowed with the 

 capacity for endless growth and development, and 

 all the others denied it.^^ Ah! that is the question of 

 questions. Compared with the development of his 

 bodily powers, man's mental and spiritual growth 

 has been very rapid. He seems to have been mil- 

 lions of years in getting his body, while he has been 

 only millenniums in getting his reason and intelli- 

 gence. What progress since the dawn of history! 

 Compare the Germans of the time of Tacitus, or the 

 Gauls of the time of Caesar, or the Britons of the 



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