The science of life : fully illustrated in tone and line and including many diagrams

BOOK 3

and finally ape turned man-ape, and manape grew to man.

If that selfsame stream of life that flows through our human generations and that we call man was once fish, and if those fishy ancestors could be transformed into our present selves in three-hundred million years, without the aid of conscious purpose in any of the prehuman forbears, who shall prophesy what our race may not achieve and into what it may not transform itself

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THE SCIENCE OF LIFE

CHAPTER 5

before another such period in the history of life on earth has passed ?

To grasp the full implications of this estimate of available time is to realize that we are still only in the dawn of consciousness and thought, and that all human will and wisdom has ever done is no more than an augury of what it may yet achieve. Evolution presents itself as an accelerating process, gathering momentum and hardly yet beyond the beginning of its revelations.