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PROOFS OF EVOLUTION. 
II. 
THE PRACTICAL BENEFITS OF THE EVOLUTION 
THEORY. 
It may be, and often has been, asked, “ Of what 
use is all this knowledge ? What is the practical 
benefit of believing that man began life as a 
Moneron, and by strict attention to business has 
worked himself up to his present high estate — 
‘the paragon of animals’ ?” In the first place, all 
this is worth knowing for truth’s own sake, since 
every truth contains the germ of good, and wher¬ 
ever it leads, all may safely follow. But the 
practical benefit which the knowledge of Evolution 
conveys, influences man in all relations of life, as 
an individual and as a member of society. First 
of all, it teaches him the great lesson of reliance 
upon law—that all things are the result of growth 
and development; that the present is the child of 
the past, the simple the germ of the complex. It 
teaches the impossibility of the fortuitous and the 
miraculous,—that if we expect effects, we must 
set in motion adequate causes; that to live wisely 
