THE LONG ROAD 
wife kneads and moulds her bread, — refining and 
refining from age to age. Much of it was held in 
solution in the primordial seas, whence it was fil- 
tered and used and precipitated by countless forms 
of marine life, making a sediment that in time be- 
came rocks, that again in time became continents 
or parts of them, which the aerial forces reduced to 
soil. Indeed, the soil itself is an evolution, as much 
so as the life upon it. 
We probably have little conception of how inti- 
mate and codperative all parts of the universe are 
with one another, — of the debt we owe to the far- 
thest stars, and to the remotest period of time. We 
must owe a debt to the monsters of Mesozoic and 
Cenozoic time; they helped to fertilize the soil for 
us, and to discipline the ruder forces of life. We owe a 
debt to all that has gone before: to the heavens above 
and to the earth-fires beneath, to the ice-sheets that 
ground down the mountains, and to the ocean cur- 
rents. Just as we owe a debt to the men and women 
in our line of descent, so we owe a debt to the ruder 
primordial forces that shaped the planet to our use, 
and took a hand in the game of animal life. 
The gods of evolution had served a long appren- 
ticeship; they had gained proficiency and were mas- 
ter workmen. Or shall we say that the elements of 
life had become more plastic and adaptable, or that 
the life fund had accumulated, so to speak? Had 
the vast succession of living beings, the long ex- 
15 
