THE HAZARDS OF THE PAST 



seems to hang by a single thread— a golden thread, 

 we may call it, but, in that terrible maze of clashing 

 forces and devouring forms of the vast geologic peri- 

 ods, how liable to be broken ! It is not now a ques- 

 tion of the continuity of a stream, but of the contin- 

 uity of a single evolutionary process, or, as Haeckel 

 says, the continuity of the morphological chain 

 which stretches from the lemurs up through tailed 

 and tailless anthropoid apes to man. If the evolu- 

 tionary impulse had been checked or extinguished in 

 the lemur — that small apelike animal that went 

 before the true ape, the fossil remains of which have 

 been found on this continent and the survivals of 

 which are now found in Madagascar — would man 

 have appeared? Again, if the race of lemurs devel- 

 oped from a single pair, how precarious seems our 

 fate! In fact, if any of the transitional forms be- 

 tween species can be reduced to a single pair — as 

 the fcJrms that connect the reptiles with the mam- 

 mals — our fate would seem to be in the keeping 

 of these forms. Over this single frail bridge which 

 escaped the floods and the tornadoes and the earth- 

 quakes of those terrible ages we must have passed. 

 What risky business it all seems ! Was it luck or law 

 that favored us? Doubtless, if we could penetrate 

 the mystery, we should see that there was no chance 

 or risk in the matter. We cannot go very far in 

 solving these great fundamental questions by ap- 

 plying to them the tests of our own experience. 



235 



