THE PHANTOMS BEHIND US 



thought that evolution is not self -caused or in any 

 true sense a cause in itself, but the instrument or 

 plan of the power that works in and through all 

 things. The ways of God in all these details are 

 past finding out, but science watches the unfolding 

 of a bud, the development of a grain of wheat, the 

 growth of the human embryo, the succession of life- 

 forms upon the globe as revealed in the records of 

 the stratified rocks, or observes in the heavens the 

 condensation of nebulous matter into suns and 

 systems, and it says this is one of his ways. Evo- 

 lution — an endless unfolding and transformation. 

 "Urge and urge and urge," says Whitman (I love 

 to repeat this saying; it is so significant), "always 

 the procreant urge of the world." Always the labor 

 and travail pains of the universe to bring forth 

 higher forms; always struggle and pain and failure 

 and death, but always a new birth and an upward 

 reach. 



Strike out the element of time and we see evolu- 

 tion as the great prestidigitator of the biologic ages. 

 The creative energy manipulates a fish and it turns 

 into a reptile; it covers a mollusk as with a vapor 

 and behold, a backboned creature instead! Now 

 we see a little creature no larger than a fox and 

 when we look again, behold the horse; a wolf or 

 some kindred animal is plunged into the water, and 

 behold, the seal ! Some small creature of the lemur 

 kind is covered with a capacious hand, and we look 



213 



