we reach the later portions of our subject, but even at the outset we must
recognize that knowledge of the great rules of nature's game, in which we
must play our parts, is the most valuable intellectual possession we can
obtain. If man and his place in nature, his mind and social obligations,
become intelligible, if right and wrong, good and evil, and duty come to
have more definite and assignable values through an understanding of the
results of science, then life may be fuller and richer, better and more
effective, in direct proportion to this understanding of the harmony of
the universe.

And so we must approach the study of the several divisions of our subject
in this frame of mind. We must meet many difficulties, of which the chief
one is perhaps our own human nature. For we as men are involved, and it is
hard indeed to take an impersonal point of view,--to put aside all
thoughts of the consequences to us of evolution, if it is true. Yet
emotion and purely human interest are disturbing elements in intellectual
development which hamper the efforts of reason to form assured
conceptions. We must disregard for the time those insistent questions as
to higher human nature, even though we must inevitably consider them at
the last. Indeed, all the human problems must be put aside until we have
prepared the way for their study by learning what evolution means, what a
living organism is, and how sure is the evidence of organic
transformation. When we know what nature is like and what natural
processes are, then we may take up the questions of supreme and deep
concern about our own human lives.

* * * * *

Human curiosity has ever demanded answers to questions about the world and
its make-up. The primitive savage was concerned primarily with the