THE PHANTOMS BEHIND US 



forms of his humbler forebears he has himself lived 

 and died myriads of times to make ready the soil 

 that nurses and sustains him to-day. He is a debtor 

 to Cambrian and Silurian times, to the dragons and 

 saurians and mastodons that have roamed over the 

 earth. Indeed, what is there or has there been in 

 the universe that he is not indebted to? The remot- 

 est star that shines has sent a ray that has entered 

 into his life. All things are under his feet, and the 

 keys of the heavens are in his hands. 



One would fain arrive at some concrete belief or 

 image of his line of descent in geologic time as he 

 does in the historic period. But how hard it is to do 

 so! Can we form any mental picture of the actual 

 animal forms that the manward impulse has trav- 

 eled through? With all the light that palaeontology 

 throws upon the animal life of the past, can we see 

 where amid the revel of these bizarre forms our an- 

 cestor hid himself? Can we see him as a reptile 

 in the slime of the jungle or in the waters of the 

 Mesozoic world? What was he like or what akin 

 to? What mark or sign was there upon him at that 

 time of the future that was before him? Can we see 

 him as a fish in the old Devonian seas or lakes? Was 

 he a big fish or a little fish? The primitive fishes 

 were mostly of the shark kind. Is there any con- 

 nection between that fact and the human sharks of 



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