CONFIRMS SCIENTIFIC EVOLUTION 61 



gan to slowly rise above the surrounding waters, 

 and lifted their mighty crests above a world floating 

 in surging waters, and darkness, except as it was 

 lit up by lightning gleams of electric power. It may 

 be that during this stage of the planet was laid the 

 foundation of all the distinctive types of life-force, 

 including the cell forms that lay at the basis of liv- 

 ing structure, the plant forms and the living forms 

 of animalcular life that float in the ocean below 

 and mists above. All of which had their home and 

 birth in the dense darkness that covered the face of 

 the deep. 



It was the formative period of elementary life, and 

 the descendants and successors of that mighty host 

 of living beings have to this day to lay the founda- 

 tions of their being in similar conditions of darkness. 

 Creative energy in its first stages of living form 

 operates in dense darkness, and the first life upon 

 the planet began and perfected itself in the age when 

 midnight gloom enveloped the globe. " The Supreme 

 Power," says the author of " Planetary Evolution," 

 1 1 wrought out its purpose with no eye to discern its 

 workings and no helpless ignorance to dictate what 

 was needed to make a world." The deep-sea sound- 

 ings show that life still exists there without the aid 

 of sunlight and that there is no limit to the domain 

 of organic life. And the necessity exists even at this 

 age for darkness during the formative processes of 

 embryonic life. 



All microscopic life embodies the essential charac- 

 teristics of activity and form that distinguish many 

 of the distinct types of animal and vegetable life. 

 The mould that gathers upon decaying bread is a 

 great forest when sufficiently magnified. The wig- 



