PROOFS OF EVOLUTION. 
61 
hand a few germ-cells. It is greater to evolve a 
principle than make a simple thing. A thing 
wears out; a principle is eternal. 
It would seem that Evolution cannot fairly stop 
at this little atom of carbon compound. Is it 
afraid or powerless to take the mystic step 
between the living and the non-living ? Did Evo¬ 
lution operate all the way from “star-dust” down 
to this little speck and then cease to operate? 
Could it make worlds, suns, and systems, and yet 
prove inefficient at this vital point? Is it not 
grander to think we were made out of something 
than out of nothing ? If creation really was the 
method, why give us the Garden of Eden, with 
the Fall of Man thrown in, rather than the 
millions of years of struggling, warring life, in 
order to reach our manhood ? If we were created, 
then why was it necessary to start us so low ? 
But, say the critics, “ If life was evolved once 
out of inorganic conditions, why not again ?” 
Why not, indeed? Who knows what life is 
evolving in torrid climes under the deep-sea ooze ? 
But it may be that the conditions of life-birth 
have forever passed. No one has yet proved or 
disproved beyond the shadow of a doubt the 
