230 The Bible of Nature 



plants and animals, or of prehistoric man. Louis 

 Agassiz spoke of the gap between the unicellular 

 Protists and multicellular organisms with ''bod- 

 ies" as "the greatest gulf in organic nature"; how 

 was that gulf bridged ? Every zoologist believes 

 — that is the proper word to use — that backboned 

 animals were evolved from backboneless ances- 

 tors, but who shall say from what kind of back- 

 boneless animal, or by what steps, or under what 

 conditions? Most anthropologists believe that 

 man was, like other organisms, the long result of 

 time^ that he sprang from an ape-like stock, but 

 no one knows from which, or where, or when, or 

 how. 



Riddles as to Origins. — Greatest of all perhaps are 

 the riddles as to origins. There is always a good 

 deal of difficulty in starting the triumphant char- 

 iot of evolution. *'Ce n'est que le premier pas 

 qui coute." 



Given the consolidated earth we can account 

 for its sculpturing, but how did the earth begin ? 

 Was it from a condensed nebula, how did the 

 nebula begin ? Was the nebula a swarm of collid- 

 ing meteorites, whence came they? Have the 

 different kinds of matter been evolved, what was 

 the raw material ? Is matter explained away as 

 " nothing but electricity," had this an origin ? 



Given living organisms to start with, we can in 

 some measure redescribe the evolution of our 



