THE EVOLUTION OF MAN 



which human beings are in the habit of calling 

 "eternity." The earth, which was present in that 

 eternity, could very well have harbored from 

 time immemorial the lowest forms of life, for in- 

 stance, uni-cellular amoebae or bacilli or the 

 earliest plant cells. 



These primitive types reflect the result of some 

 special stimuli which were due to the development 

 of that time, and these types were then started 

 into a course of higher evolution leading up to 

 man. This theory is logical and perfectly sound. 

 The living arch-cell in that case is simply an 

 eternal form on this globe, and we may use these 

 terms in the same way in which every student of 

 physics speaks of heat as an eternal form of uni- 

 versal force. 



However, this idea is combated by an argu- 

 ment taken purely from a universally accepted 

 conception of geologists as to certain primitive 

 historical evidence in the formation of the entire 

 earth. There are certain valid reasons which 

 speak in favor of the probability that this globe 

 was an enormously hot and glowing body, such 

 as the sun is even now, and .contained all of its 

 substances in a state of white heat or gas. Many 

 of the reasons on which this conception is based 

 have been found to be open to attack. But most 



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