88 THE ASCENT OF MAN 



countless millions both of animals and plants. 

 Just as in modern England the millionaire's man- 

 sion — the evolved form — is surrounded by labourers' 

 cottages — the simple form — so in Nature, living 

 side by side with the many-celled higher animals, 

 is an immense democracy of unicellular artizans. 

 These simple cells are perfect living things. The 

 earth, the water, and the air teem with them every- 

 where. They move, they eat, they reproduce their 

 like. But one thing they do not do — they do 

 not rise. These organisms have, as it were, stopped 

 short in the ascent of life. And long as Evolution 

 has worked upon the earth, the vast numerical 

 majority of plants and animals are still at this low 

 stage of being. So minute are some of these 

 forms that if their one-roomed huts were arranged 

 in a row it would take twelve thousand to form a 

 street a single inch in length. In their watery 

 cities — for most of them are Lake-Dwellers — a 

 population of eight hundred thousand million could 

 be accommodated within a cubic inch. Yet, as 

 there was a period in human history when none 

 but cave-dwellers lived in Europe, so was there a 

 time when the highest forms of life upon the globe 

 were these microscopic things. See, therefore, the 

 meaning of Evolution from the want of it. In a 

 single hour or second the human embryo attains 



