THE PHANTOMS BEHIND US 
thought that evolution is not self-caused or in any 
true sense a cause in itself, but the instrument or 
plan of the power that works in and through all 
things. The ways of God in all these details are 
past finding out, but science watches the unfolding 
of a bud, the development of a grain of wheat, the 
growth of the human embryo, the succession of life- 
forms upon the globe as revealed in the records of 
the stratified rocks, or observes in the heavens the 
condensation of nebulous matter into suns and 
systems, and it says this is one of his ways. Evo- 
lution — an endless unfolding and transformation. 
“Urge and urge and urge,” says Whitman (I love 
to repeat this saying; it is so significant), “always 
the procreant urge of the world.” Always the labor 
and travail pains of the universe to bring forth 
higher forms; always struggle and pain and failure 
and death, but always a new birth and an upward 
reach. 
Strike out the element of time and we see evolu- 
tion as the great prestidigitator of the biologic ages. 
The creative energy manipulates a fish and it turns 
into a reptile; it covers a mollusk as with a vapor 
and behold, a backboned creature instead! Now 
we see a little creature no larger than a fox and 
when we look again, behold the horse; a wolf or 
some kindred animal is plunged into the water, and 
behold, the seal! Some small creature of the lemur 
kind is covered with a capacious hand, and we look 
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