124 The Morality of Nature 



And it is also shown to be enormous in accomplishment. 

 Life structures, such as shells, have been counted one by 

 one into new islands and mountains, while atoms and cells 

 have been marshalled into new hordes of life and new 

 organisms. Natural conditions have slowly altered from 

 tropical to polar and from affluent to arid while, step by 

 step, living things have altered their habits and forms, and 

 changed to meet the new demands. Animals living on land 

 have become specialized to live in the sea, and those of the 

 sea to live on dry earth. And always these things have 

 been done in additions of minute successes, in the continued 

 effort to become more fit, and most fit, to survive. The 

 chief thing needed in the average mental conception to 

 comprehend this story is a true appreciation of time. It is 

 merely a matter of arithmetic to show that a mountain 

 could be built of so many million grains of sand, and there 

 is no difficulty in the belief that one grain of sand could 

 come to the place in question every day, but there is a reluc- 

 tance to believe that so many million days could have passed 

 while the mountain grew in that slow manner. Yet all 

 philosophers of all ages agree in attributing to the first 

 cause of things, infinite ages of time, in which days and 

 epochs and eons, are as almost equal quantities. Now 

 modern sciences show these ages as realities still proceeding, 

 today being one of them equally potent with any day gone 

 by, when things we now know were being created. It is 

 necessary to imagine the possibility, and then to recognize 

 the fact, that time has passed, in measures so vast, that no 

 process of change which we see to occur, can be limited in 

 extent or in effects. Its nature may be bounded and all its 



