TIME AND CHANGE 
lower to the higher, from the simple to the more 
complex, and always slowly, gently. 
Life has had its fcetal stage, its stage of infancy, 
and childhood, and maturity, and will doubtless 
have its old age. It took it millions upon millions of 
years to get out of the sea upon dry land; and it 
took it more millions upon dry land, or since the 
Carboniferous age, when the air probably first be- 
gan to be breathable, — all the vast stretch of the 
Secondary and Tertiary ages, —to get upright and 
develop a reasoning brain, and reach the estate of 
man. Step by step, in orderly succession, does crea- 
tion move. In the rising and in'the setting of the 
sun one may see how nature’s great processes steal 
upon us, silently and unnoticed, yet always in 
sequence, stage succeeding stage, one thing following 
from another, the spectacular moment of sunset fol- 
lowing inevitably from the quiet, unnoticed sinking 
of the sun in the west, or the startling flash of his 
rim above the eastern horizon only the fulfillment of 
the promise of the dawn. All is development and 
succession, and man is but the sunrise of the dawn 
of life in Cambrian or Silurian times, and is linked to 
that time as one hour of the.day is linked to another. 
The more complex life became, the more rapidly 
it seems to have developed, till it finally makes 
rapid strides to reach man. One seems to see Life, 
like a traveler on the road, going faster and faster 
as it nears its goal. Those long ages of unicellular 
24 
