DEVONIAN FISHES OF IOWA 39 



myriads of ages between the first cooling of its mass and the 

 beginnings of life! Of what consequence is the turmoil of our 

 ant-hill alongside the geological tragedy in which we have borne 

 no part, the strife between fire and water, the thickening of the 

 earth's crust, the formation of the universal sea, the construc- 

 tion and separation of continents ! Previous to our historical 

 record what a long history of animal and vegetable existence, 

 what a succession of flora and fauna ! What generations of 

 marine organisms in forming sedimentary strata, what genera- 

 tions of plants in forming coal deposits ! And at length comes 

 man, the latest of all, shooting up as the terminal bud at the top 

 of a lofty antique tree, growing there a few seasons, but destined 

 to perish, like the tree, after a few seasons, when the increasing 

 and foretold congelation allowing the tree to live shall force the 

 tree to die. He is not alone on the branch : beneath him, around 

 him, on a level with him, other buds shoot forth, born of the same 

 sap; but he must not forget if he would comprehend his own 

 being, that, along with himself, other lives exist in his vicinity, 

 graduated up to him and issuing from the same trunk. If he is 

 unique he is not isolated, being an animal among other animals. 

 . . . Thus surrounded, brought forth and borne along by 

 nature, is it to be supposed that in nature he is an empire within 

 an empire? He is there as part of a whole, by virtue of being 

 a physical body, a chemical composition, an animated organism, 

 a sociable animal, among other bodies, other compositions, other 

 social animals, all analogous to him ; and by virtue of these classi- 

 fications he is, like them, subject to laws. ... In all this 

 man continues nature ; hence, if he would comprehend himself, 

 he must observe hirn in her, after her, and like her, with the 

 same independence, the same precautions, and in the same 

 spirit. ' ' 



An immediate application of the view just stated is that it 

 constantly brings before us the eternal in the midst of the pres- 

 ent. Turning now to our own times, by far the most trenchant 

 of reorganizing or emancipating ideas that has modified the 

 world of thought is the theory of organic evolution, first fully 

 set forth by Darwin in 1858, although foreshadowed, suggested, 

 and even explicitly proposed by various clear-sighted thinkers 

 before a new era was opened up in natural science by the Origin 

 of Species. Noteworthy is the fact that practically the same 

 theory of the descent of species, though without the causo- 

 mechanical explanation of their origin by means of natural se- 

 lection (the essential idea to which the term Darwinism is prop- 



