THE LONG ROAD 
If we once seriously undertake to solve the riddle 
of man’s origin, and go back along the line of his de- 
scent, I doubt if we can find the point, or the form, 
where the natural is supplanted by the supernatural 
as it is called, where causation ends and miracle be- 
gins. Even the first dawn of protozoic life in the pri- 
mordial seas must have been natural, or it would not 
have occurred, — must have been potential in what 
went before it. In this universe, so far as we know 
it, one thing springs from another; the sequence of 
cause and effect is continuous and inviolable. 
We know that no man is born of full stature, 
with his hat and boots on; we know that he grows 
from an infant, and we know the infant grows from 
a foetus, and that the foetus grows from a bit of 
nucleated protoplasm in the mother’s womb. Why 
may not the race of man grow from a like simple 
beginning? It seems to be the order of nature; it is 
the order of nature, — first the germ, the inception, 
then the slow growth from the simple to the com- 
plex. It is the order of our own thoughts, our own 
arts, our own civilization, our own language. 
In our candid moments we acknowledge the ani- 
mal in ourselves and in our neighbors, — especially 
in our neighbors, — the beast, the shark, the hog, 
the sloth, the fox, the monkey; but to accept the 
notion of our animal origin, that gives us pause. To 
believe that our remote ancestor, no matter how 
remote in time or space, was a lowly organized crea- 
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