TIME AND CHANGE 
That the apparently blind groping and experi- 
mentation which mark the course of evolution as re- 
vealed by paleontology — the waste, the delay, the 
vicissitudes, the hit-and-miss method — should have 
finally resulted in this supreme animal, man, puts 
our scientific faith to the test. In the light of evo- 
lution how the halo with which we have surrounded 
our origin vanishes! 
Man has from the earliest period believed himself 
of divine origin, and by the divine he has meant 
something far removed from this earth and all its 
laws and processes, something quite transcending 
the mundane forces. He has invented or dreamed 
myths and legends to throw the halo of the excep- 
tional, the far removed, the mystical, or the divine 
around his origin. He has spurned the clod with his 
foot; he has denied all kinship with bird and beast 
around him, and looked to the heavens above for the 
sources of his life. And then unpitying science comes 
along and tells him that he is under the same law as 
the life he treads under foot, and that that law is 
adequate to transform the worm into the man; that 
he, too, has groveled in the dust, or wallowed in the 
slime, or fought and reveled, a reptile among rep- 
tiles; that the heavens above him, to which he turns 
with such awe and reverence, or such dread and fore- 
boding, are the source of his life and hope in no other 
sense than they are the source of the life and hope 
of all other creatures. But this is the way of science; 
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