into the sea, that the sea has encroached a little upon the land, and
that some mountains may be a trifle lower than in the morning of
creation. The theory of gradual development was unknown to our fathers;
the idea of evolution did not occur to them. Our fathers looked upon
the then arrangement of things as the primal arrangement. The earth
appeared to them fresh from the hands of a deity. They knew nothing of
the slow evolutions of countless years, but supposed that the almost
infinite variety of vegetable and animal forms had existed from the
first.

Suppose that upon some island we should find a man a million years of
age, and suppose that we should find him in the possession of a most
beautiful carriage, constructed upon the most perfect model. And suppose
further, that he should tell us that it was the result of several
hundred thousand years of labor and of thought; that for fifty thousand
years he used as flat a log as he could find, before it occurred to him
that by splitting the log he could have the same surface with only half
the weight; that it took him many thousand years to invent wheels for
this log; that the wheels he first used were solid, and that fifty
thousand years of thought suggested the use of spokes and tire; that
for many centuries he used the wheels without linch-pins: that it took
a hundred thousand years more to think of using four wheels, instead of
two; that for ages he walked behind the carriage, when going down hill,
in order to hold it back, and that only by a lucky chance he invented
the tongue; would we conclude that this man, from the very first, had
been an infinitely ingenious and perfect mechanic? Suppose we found him
living in an elegant mansion, and he should inform us that he lived in
that house for five hundred thousand years before he thought of putting
on a roof, and that he had but recently invented windows and doors;
would we say that from the beginning he had been an infinite