56 FOOT-NOTES TO EVOLUTION. 
even of individuals as permanent entities. The mountain 
chain is no more nearly eternal than the drift of sand. 
It endures beyond the period of human observation; it 
antedates and outlasts human history. So does the 
species of animal or plant outlast and antedate the life- 
time of one man. Its changes are slight even in the 
lifetime of the race. Thus the species, through the per- 
sistence of its type among its changing individuals, 
comes to be regarded as something which is beyond 
modification, unchanging so long as it exists. 
“T believe,’ said the rose to the lily in the parable, 
“JT believe that our gardener is immortal. I have 
watched him from day to day since I bloomed, and I see 
nochangein him. The tulip who died yesterday told me 
the same thing.” 
As a flash of lightning in the duration of the night, 
so is the life of man in the duration of Nature. When 
one looks out on a storm at night he sees for an instant 
the landscape illumined by the lightning flash. All seems 
at rest. The branches in the wind, the flying clouds, 
the falling rain, are all motionless in this instantaneous 
view. The record on the retina takes no account of 
change, and to the eye the change does not exist. 
Brief as the lightning flash in the storm is the life of 
man compared with the great time record of life upon 
earth. To the untrained man who has not learned to 
read these records, species and types in life are endur- 
ing. From this illusion arose the thecry of special crea- 
tion and permanence of type, a theory which could not 
persist when the fact of change and the forces causing 
it came to be studied in detail. 
But when man came to investigate the facts of indi- 
vidual variation and to think of their significance, the 
current of life no longer seemed at rest. Like the flow 
of a mighty river, ever sweeping steadily on, never re- 
