THE ARREST OF THE BODY i2y 



muscle have now been realized ; that in whatever 

 direction, and with whatever materials, Evolution 

 still may work, it will never produce any material 

 thing more perfect in design or workmanship ; that 

 in Man, in short, about this time in history, we 

 are confronted with a stupendous crisis in Nature, 

 — the Arrest of the Animal. The Man, the Animal 

 Man, the Man of Organic Evolution, it is at least 

 certain, will not go on. It is another Man who 

 will go on, a Man within this Man ; and that he 

 may go on the first Man must stop. Let us try 

 for a moment to learn what it is to stop. Nothing 

 could teach Man better what is meant by his 

 going on. 



One of the most perfect pieces of mechanism 

 in the human body is the Hand. How long it 

 has taken to develop may be dimly seen by a 

 glance at the long array of less accurate instru- 

 ments of prehension which shade away with ever 

 decreasing delicacy and perfectness as we descend 

 the scale of animal life. At the bottom of that 

 scale is the Amoeba. It is a speck of protoplasmic 

 jelly, headless, footless, and armless. When it 

 wishes to seize the microscopic particle of food on 

 which it lives a portion of its body lengthens out, 

 and, moving towards the object, flows over it, en- 

 gulfs it, and melts back again into the body. 



I 



