THE LONG ROAD 
began his existence seems to me misleading, be- 
cause it appears to convey the idea that he began 
as man at some time, in some place. Whereas he 
grew. He began where and when the first cell ap- 
peared, and he has been on the road ever since. 
There is no point in the line where he emerged from 
the not-man and became man. He was emerging 
from the not-man for millions of years, and when 
you put your finger on an animal form and say, 
This is man, you must go back through whole geo- 
logic periods before you reach the not-man. If Dar- 
win is right, there is no more reason for believing 
that the different species or forms of animal life were 
suddenly introduced than there is for believing that 
the soil, or the minerals, gold, silver, diamonds, or 
vegetable mold and verdure were suddenly intro- 
duced. 
II 
If we know anything of the earth’s past history, 
we know that the continents were long in forming, 
that they passed through many vicissitudes of heat 
and cold, of fire and flood, of upheaval and sub- 
sidence — that they had, so to speak, their first 
low, simple rudimentary or invertebrate life, that 
they were all slow in getting their backbones, slower 
still in clothing their rock ribs with soil and ver- 
dure, that they passed through a sort of amphibian 
stage, now under water, now on dry land, that 
their many kinds of soils and climes were not differ- 
13 
