How Animals Talk 



parently, was the age-long process from the sen- 

 tient cell to the living man. 



Since we are following a different trail, this is 

 hardly the time or place to face the question how 

 this development from mere living to conscious 

 life took place, even if one were wise or rash 

 enough to grapple with the final problem of 

 evolution. Yet it may not be amiss while we 

 "rest a pipe," as the voyageurs say, to point out 

 that, of the two possible answers to our question 

 (aside from the convenient and restful answer that 

 God made things so), only one, curiously enough, 

 has thus far been considered by our physical 

 scientists. The thousand books and theories of 

 evolution which one reads are all reducible to this 

 elementary proposition: that the simple things of 

 life became complex by inner necessity. In other 

 words, an eye became an eye, or an oak an oak, 

 or a man a man, simply because each must de- 

 velop according to the inner law of its being. 



That may be true, though the all-compelling 

 "inner law" is still only a vague assumption, and 

 the mystery of its origin is untouched ; but why 

 not by outer compulsion as reasonably as by in- 

 ner necessity? A cell-of-life that was constantly 

 bombarded by moving particles of matter might be 

 compelled to develop a sense of touch, in order to 

 save its precious life by differentiating such par- 



[86J 



