REVOLUTION VS. EVOLUTION 
309 
companions of the evolutionary process from which the hit-or- 
miss method of Nature may never permit mankind to escape. 
For the disciples of evolution, who are thus led to believe in the 
impotency of natural laws and human worth, the future must 
indeed be black with despair. 
Then, which shall it be? Evolution or revolution? Human 
ability and natural processes or suprahuman forces and super- 
natural power? Obviously, the question is far from being 
merely academic. One ’s whole philosophy of life, one ’s allegiance 
to the myriad welfare organizations of the land, one’s alignment 
on the foremost political and social questions of the day, all 
these and more depend upon the answer. Nor is it a question 
which can be long postponed. So insistent has the clamor of the 
revolutionists become, that it penetrates even to the sequestered 
laboratory of the paleontologist and bids him rise from his 
study of fossil shell and petrified bone to give ear to the babel 
of twentieth century voices. And not unwillingly does he join 
the debate; for when it comes to a question of evolution who is 
there better fitted to make response than he who has visuahzed 
the stream of life which pulsed along the channels he has traced 
from those far-off Cambrian days until now? 
Consider the lilies of the field and the birds of the air, the 
fishes of the sea and the creatures of the land. Retrace with 
the student of ancient life the long road that leads to man; 
watch the phantoms behind us” marching step by step along 
that road. Search out the milestones of the past that mark the 
successful accomplishment of the great forward movements in 
life. For these creatures of the vanished ages, who have left 
the story of their lives recorded in the rocks of the earth’s crust, 
are our kinfolk. Their problems are ours; our problems are but 
theirs. They have blazed the trail for us. The route to success 
and progress and ‘‘better things,” which they found, is still 
open. The paths to . failure, which they trod, are today as fair 
to look upon and as fatal to pursue as they have ever been. 
