PROOFS OF EVOLUTION 
I. 
THE GROWTH OF EVOLUTIONARY THOUGHT. 
E MERSON says: “ Beware when the great God 
lets loose a thinker on this planet. Then all 
things are at risk.” This laconic saying has been 
more than verified within the last thirty years. 
The thinkers have been holding high carnival; — 
and all about a little protoplasmic cell that none 
of them could see with the naked eye. 
Two great questions have always been before 
the world: one, as to the beginning of all things; 
the other, as to the end of all things. Concerning 
these two problems, many sacred books have been 
written, from which a dozen great religious sys¬ 
tems have sprung, all setting forth, more or less 
minutely, theories of the genesis of mind and 
matter. The explanations thus given, though 
crude and barbarous in many of their features, 
