LEAF AND TENDRIL 



know of the unity of nature to believe that one spe- 

 cies should have come through another, that man 

 should have come through the brute rather than 

 have been grafted upon him from without. Unfold- 

 ing and ever unfolding, upward and onward, from 

 the lower to the higher, from the simple to the 

 complex — that has been the course of organic 

 evolution from the first. 



One thinks of the creative energy as working 

 along many lines, only one of which eventuated 

 in man ; all the others fell short, or terminated in 

 lower forms. Hence while we think of man as 

 capable of, and destined to, still higher develop- 

 ment, we look upon the lower orders as having 

 reached the end of their course, and conclude there 

 is no to-morrow for them. 



The anthropoid apes seem indeed like prelimi- 

 nary studies of man, or rejected models of the great 

 inventor who was blindly groping his way to the 

 higher form. The ape is probably our ancestor 

 in no other sense than this. Nature seems to have 

 had man in mind when she made him, but evi- 

 dently she lost interest in him, humanly speaking, 

 and tried some other combination. The ape must 

 always remain an ape. Some collateral branch 

 doubtless gave birth to a higher form, and this to 

 a still higher, till we reach our preglacial forbears. 

 Then some one branch or branches distanced all 

 others, leaving rude tribes by the way in whom 



