prodigious strides when once fairly launched upon his career. Can it
be possible, we ask, that this god was fathered by the low bestial
orders below him,--instinct giving birth to reason, animal ferocity
developing into human benevolence, the slums of nature sending forth
the ruler of the earth. It is a hard proposition, I say, undoubtedly
the hardest that science has ever confronted us with.

Haeckel, discussing this subject, suggests that it is the parvenu in
us that is reluctant to own our lowly progenitors, the pride of
family and position, like that of would-be aristocratic sons who
conceal the humble origin of their parents. But it is more than
that; it is the old difficulty of walking by faith where there is
nothing visible to walk upon: we lack faith in the efficiency of the
biologic laws, or any mundane forces, to bridge the tremendous chasm
that separates man from even the highest of the lower orders. His
radical unlikeness to all the forms below him, as if he moved in a
world apart, into which they could never enter, as in a sense he
does, is where the difficulty lies. Moreover, evolution balks us
because of the inconceivable stretch of time during which it has
been at work. It is as impossible for us to grasp geological time as
sidereal space. All the standards of measurement furnished us by
experience are as inadequate as is a child's cup to measure the
ocean.

Several million years, or one million years,--how can we take it in?
We cannot. A hundred years is a long time in human history, and how
we pause before a thousand! Then think of ten thousand, of fifty
thousand, of one hundred thousand, of ten hundred thousand, or one
million, or of one hundred million! What might not the slow but
ceaseless creative energy do in that time, changing but a hair in