LEAF AND TENDRIL 



origin, but behold how they have diverged. How 

 could the intelligence of one have been evolved out 

 of the intelligence of the other without this mystery 

 of slow metamorphosis ? 



I do not know how far back along the line of evo- 

 lution in animal life biologists place the beginning 

 of the sense of sight, certainly the highest of all 

 bodily senses. But it must have begun somewhere 

 a good way this side of the first unicellular life; the 

 eye as an organ and as we know it is doubtless a 

 late development. And what a marvel it is ! What 

 can be a greater departure from the sense of touch 

 and taste and smell — more like a miraculous ad- 

 dition or metamorphosis — than the sense of sight? 

 And yet its foundation is the same as that of the 

 other senses, nerve sensibility. 



Or take another near-at-hand illustration. What 

 can seem more like a new birth, a new creation, 

 than the flower of a plant when contrasted with its 

 leaves and stalk and root? Yet all this delicacy 

 and color and fragrance come by way of these hum- 

 bler parts; indeed, lay dormant there in the soil 

 till this something we call life drew them out of it 

 and built them up into this exquisite form. In the 

 same way, may not the animal nature in the course 

 of long ages have blossomed into the mental and 

 spiritual powers which man possesses, and which 

 are only latent in the lower creatures ? We see the 

 miracle of the flower daily, but the other miracle is 

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