THE BREATH OF LIFE 



much a part of the scheme of things as the produc- 

 tion of pleasure; the creative impulse feeling its way 

 through the mollusk to the fish, and through the fish 

 to the amphibian and the reptile, through the reptile 

 to the mammal, and through the mammal to the an- 

 thropoid apes, and through the apes to man, then 

 through the rude and savage races of man, the long- 

 jawed, small-brained, Pliocene man, hairy and sav- 

 age, to the cave-dwellers and stone-implement man 

 of Pleistocene times, and so on to our rude ancestors 

 whom we see dimly at the dawn of history, and thus 

 rapidly upward to the European man of our own 

 era. What a record ! What savagery, what thwart- 

 ings and delays, what carnage and suffering, what 

 an absence of all that we mean by intelligent plan- 

 ning and oversight, of love, of fatherhood! Just a 

 clash of forces, the battle to the strong and the race 

 to the fleet. 



It is hard to believe that the course of organic 

 evolution would have eventuated in man and the 

 other higher forms of life without some guiding 

 principle; yet it is equally difficult to believe that 

 the course of any guiding intelligence down the ages 

 would have been strewn with so many failures 

 and monstrosities, so much waste and suffering and 

 delay. Man has not been specially favored by one 

 force or element in nature. Behold the enemies that 

 beset him without and within, and that are armed 

 for his destruction ! The intelligence that appears to 



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