TIME AND CHANGE 
brooding seems to have gone on, was probably as 
long as all the ages since. 
How we are baffled when we talk about the begin- 
ning of anything in nature or in our own lives! In 
our experience there must be a first, but when did 
manhood begin; when did puberty, when did old 
age, begin? When did each stage of our mental 
growth begin? When or where did the English lan- 
guage begin, or the French, or the German? Was 
there a first English word spoken? From the first 
animal sound, if we can conceive of such, up to the 
human speech of to-day, there is an infinite grada- 
tion of sounds and words. 
Was there a first summer, a first winter, a first 
spring? There could hardly have been a first day 
even for ages and ages, but only slowly approxi- 
mating day. After an immense lapse of time the air 
must have cleared and the day become separated 
from the night, and the seasons must have become 
gradually defined. Things slowly emerge one after 
another from a dim, nebulous condition, both in our 
own growth and experience and in the development 
of the physical universe. 
In nature there is no first and last. There is an 
endless beginning and an endless ending. There was 
no first man or first woman, no first bird, or fish, or 
reptile. Back of each one stretches an endless chain 
of approximating men and birds and reptiles. 
This talk about the time and place where man 
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