THE EVOLUTION OF THE EARTH.* 



This beautiful home of ours, the earth — how Avas it 

 built ? — who were its builders ".' What are the forces that 

 have fashioned and prepared it to become the habitation of 

 man '.' Wliat has been the history of the earth, since, as a 

 molten ball, it Avas set upon its course around the sun ? 

 These are the questions which we are to attempt to answer 

 to-night. What the cosmogonist has to tell us of the earth's 

 earlier history, we have already learned from the delightful 

 lecture of IVIr. Serviss. We have seen how, from the prim- 

 itive and almost homogeneous fire-mist, the suns and plan- 

 ets have been evolved, by a process of differentiation and 

 integration, proceeding from the indefinite, incoherent, ho- 

 mogeneous, toward the definite, coherent, heterogeneous con- 

 dition illustrated by the present state of our solar system, 

 thus fulfilling the fundamental law of evolution as laid down 

 by Mr. Spencer.f We have learned that while there is some 

 difference of opinion as to the exact method by which this 

 grand result has been accomplished, there is no doubt in the 

 minds of scientific thinkers that the process has been orderly 

 and natural from first to last, impelled by the o])eration 

 of laws and forces which are still operating, and whose ac- 

 tion is familiar to us, — forces which are resident in the mat- 

 ter out of which the universe is builded, — without the aid 

 of supernatural interference or miracle. 



How, then, is it with the subsequent history of the earth ? 

 We all know the old way of accounting for all this : how, 

 as the legend runs, in six days the Lord not only brought 

 the Avorld into being, gave it the sun and moon and stars, — 

 <'the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser lights to 

 rule the night," — but also clothed it with the verdure of 



* Copyright, 1889, by The New Ideal Publishing Company. 



t Evolution involves "the integration of matter and concomitant dissipation 

 of motion, attended by a continuous change from indetinite, incoherent homo- 

 geneity to definite, coherent lieterogeneity of structure and function, through 

 successive differentiations and integrations." 



