swimming and creeping and climbing things, and that the forms that
conveyed it should have escaped the devouring monsters of the earth,
sea, and air till it came to its full estate in a human being, is
the wonder of wonders.

In like manner, evolution raises immensely the value of the
biological processes that are everywhere operative about us, by
showing us that these processes are the channels through which the
creative energy has worked, and is still working. Not in the far-off
or in the exceptional does it seek the key to man's origin, but in
the sleepless activity of the creative force, which has been pushing
onward and upward, from the remotest time, till it has come to full
fruition in man.

It is easy to inject into man's natural history a supernatural
element, as nearly all biologists and anthropologists before
Darwin's time did, and as many serious people still do. It is too
easy, in fact, and the temptation to do so is great. It makes short
work of the problem of man's origin, and saves a deal of trouble.
But this method is more and more discredited, and the younger
biologists and natural philosophers accept the zoological
conception of man, which links him with all the lower forms, and
proceed to work from that.

When we have taken the first step in trying to solve the problem of
man's origin, where can we stop? Can we find any point in his
history where we can say, Here his natural history ends, and his
supernatural history begins? Does his natural history end with the
pre-glacial man, with the cave man, or the river-drift man, with the
low-browed, long-jawed fossil man of Java,--Pithecanthropus erectus,