EVOLUTION IN GENERAL 



further revelation should not await us on the 

 highest themes of all. 



The day is for ever past when science need 

 apologize for treating Man as an object of natural 

 research. Hamlet's " being of large discourse, look- 

 ing before and after" is withal a part of Nature, 

 and can be made neither larger nor smaller, antici- 

 pate less nor prophesy less, because we investigate, 

 and perhaps discover, the secret of his past. And 

 should that past be proved to be related in un- 

 dreamed-of ways to that of all other things in 

 Nature, "all other things" have that to gain by 

 the alliance which philosophy and theology for 

 centuries have striven to win for them. Every 

 step in the proof of the oneness in a uni- 

 versal evolutionary process of this divine humanity 

 of ours is a step in the proof of the divinity 

 of all lower things. And what is of infinitely 

 greater moment, each footprint discovered in the 

 Ascent of Man is a guide to the step to be 

 taken next. To discover the rationale of social 

 progress is the ambition of this age. There is an 

 extraordinary human interest abroad about this 

 present world itself, a yearning desire, not from 

 curious but for practical reasons, to find some light 

 upon the course ; and as the goal comes nearer 

 the eagerness passes into suspense tP know the 



