THE NATURALISTS VIEW OF LIFE 



but as men of science we can see it only as a vast 

 complex of forces, out of which man has arisen, and 

 of which he forms a part. We are not to forget that 

 we are a part of it, and that the more we magnify 

 ourselves, the more we magnify it; that its glory is 

 our glory, and our glory its glory, because we are 

 its children. In some way utterly beyond the reach 

 of science to explain, or of philosophy to confirm, 

 we have come out of it, and all we are or can be, is, 

 or has been, potential in it. 



IX 



The evolution of life is, of course, bound up with 

 the evolution of the world. As the globe has rip- 

 ened and matured, life has matured; higher and 

 higher forms — forms with larger and larger brains 

 and more and more complex nerve mechanisms — 

 have appeared. 



Physicists teach us that the evolution of the pri- 

 mary elements — hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, car- 

 bon, calcium, and the like — takes place in a solar 

 body as the body cools. As temperature decreases, 

 one after another of the chemical elements makes its 

 appearance, the simpler elements appearing first, 

 and the more complex compounds appearing last, 

 all apparently having their origin in some simple 

 parent element. It appears as if the evolution of life 

 upon the globe had followed the same law and had 

 waited upon the secular cooling of the earth. 



281 



