302 The Morality of Nature 



yet been explored. It is to be supposed that much light will 

 in future be thrown upon this question. Meantime we find 

 nothing to deny the possibility of man's origin in evolution 

 from a lower form of life — nothing necessitating a miracu- 

 lous intervention by a Deity who desired to change his 

 original mandate. 



From such a supposition therefore we return to our 

 geological evidence and finally regard the marshalled array 

 of life forms, progressing in advancing types of higher and 

 higher organization, broken by losses but never by reversals ; 

 and we accept the conviction that all the later life is 

 descended from the earlier, and all the more complex life 

 is evolved from the simpler, partly in a direct upward evo- 

 lution and partly in specialization indirectly without novelty 

 of structure. The change whether constructive or merely 

 adaptive was made by a growth so slow that it cannot be 

 perceived in one generation or even in a hundred, and yet 

 the thousands of generations needed, occupy in the record 

 only a short chapter. Yet why should this slowness perplex ; 

 one does not see the tree grow, yet it is two feet high for 

 the father, and a hundred feet for his grandchild, and the 

 child does not disbelieve when the grandfather says, 'T 

 planted that tree two feet high." 



It is not to be doubted that all the characteristics of 

 animal life, including those of humanity have been slowly 

 formed by each generation adding to an accumulating hered- 

 ity, an imperceptible trifle, as the tree adds to its form by 

 new growth. The enormous time needed for the develop- 

 ment of present man from his earliest humanity, is a mere 

 trifle of time in that of the geological record; and the evo- 



