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“THE WORM STRIVING TO BE MAN” 
HEN our minds have expanded sufficiently 
to take in and accept the theory of evo- 
lution, with what different feelings we look upon 
the visible universe from those with which our fa- 
thers looked upon it! Evolution makes the universe 
alive. In its light we see that mysterious potency 
of matter itself, that something in the clod under 
foot that justifies Emerson’s audacious line of the 
“worm striving to be man.” We are no longer the 
adopted children of the earth, but her own real off- 
spring. Evolution puts astronomy and geology in 
our blood and authenticates us and gives us the 
backing of the whole solar system. This is the re- 
demption of the earth: it is the spiritualization of 
matter. 
In imagination stand off in vacant space and see 
the earth rolling by you, a huge bubble with all its 
continents and seas and changing seasons and count- 
less forms of life upon it, and remember that you are 
looking upon a great cosmic organism, pulsing with 
the vital currents of the universe, and that what 
it holds of living forms were not arbitrarily imposed 
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