"Not

"A little leaven leaveneth the whole lump." by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, saith the Lord of Hosts."

But, you will object, the grandest kings have had, as a rule, the fewest loyal subjects. The prophets and seers are stoned. Elijah stands alone on Carmel and opposed to him are more than a thousand prophets of Baal, with court and king at their head. Heroism does not pay, and heroes are few. Right is always in a hopeless minority. Let us look into this matter carefully, for the objection, even if overstated, certainly contains a large amount of truth.

Let us go back to two forms having much the same grade of organization: both worms. One of them sets out to become a vertebrate, building an internal skeleton. The other forms an external skeleton and becomes a crab. To form its skeleton the crab had only to thicken the cuticle already present in the annelid. It had to modify the already existing parapodia and their muscles, changing them to legs. The external skeleton gave from the start a double advantage -protection and better locomotion. Every grain of thickening aided the animal in the struggle for existence in both these ways. The very fact that the skeleton was external may have rendered it more liable to variation, because it was thus exposed to continual stimuli. And the best were rapidly sifted out by Natural Selection. The change and development went on with comparative rapidity. In the mollusk the change was apparently still more easy and the development still more rapid.

But the development of an internal skeleton was more difficult and slower. It was of no use for the

protection of the animal, and only gradually did it become of much service in locomotion. Being deepseated it very possibly changed all the more slowly. Furthermore, a cartilaginous rod, like the notochord, even fully developed, hardly enabled the animal to fight directly with the mail-clad crab. The internal skeleton had to become far more highly developed before its great advantages, and freedom from disadvanThe mollusk and crab were tages, became apparent. working a mine rich in surface deposits although soon exhausted. The vertebrate lead was poor at the surface, and only later showed its inexhaustible richness. It looked as if the vertebrate were making a very poor speculation.

Whether this explanation be true or not, a glance at a chart, showing the geological succession of occurrence of the different kingdoms, proves that in the oldest paleozoic periods there were well-developed cuttlefish and crabs before there were any vertebrates worthy of the name. If any were present, their skeleton was purely cartilaginous and not preserved.

I think we may go farther, although in this latter consideration we may very possibly be mistaken. We have already seen that the progress made by any animal may be measured more or less accurately by the length of time during which its ancestors maintained a swimming life. The ancestors of the coelenterates settled to the bottom first. Then successively those of flatworms, mollusks, annelids, and crabs. All this time the ancestors of vertebrates were swimming in the water above. Food was probably more abundant, certainly more easily and economically obtained by a creeping life, on the bottom. But thither the

vertebrate could not go. There his mail-clad competitors were too strong for him. Those which settled and tried to compete in this sort of life perished. We may have to except the ascidia, but they paid for their success by the loss of nearly all their vertebrate characteristics. The future progress of vertebrates depended upon their continual activity in the swimming life. And they were forced by their environment to maintain this. Otherwise they might, probably would, never have attained their present height of organization. Certainly at this time you would have found it hard to believe that the victory was to fall to these weaker and smaller vertebrates.

Let us come down to a later period. Reptiles, mammals, and birds are struggling for supremacy. Of the power and diversity of form of these old reptiles we have generally no adequate conception. The forms now living are but feeble remnants. There were huge sea-serpents, and forms like our present crocodiles, but far more powerful. Others apparently resembled in form and habit the herbivorous and carnivorous mammals of to-day. Others strode or leaped on two legs. And still others flew like bats or birds. They were terrible forms, with coats of mail and powerful jaws and teeth. And they were active and swift. When we look at them we see that the vertebrate, though slow in gaining the lead, is sure to hold it. The internal skeleton gave fewer advantages at the start; its greatest superiority had lain in future possibilities.

But which vertebrate is heir to the future? It would have been a hard choice between reptile and bird. I feel sure that I, for one, should not have se

lected the mammal, a small, feeble being, hiding in holes and ledges, and continually hard put to it to escape becoming a mouthful for some huge reptile. And yet the persecution, the impossibility of contending by brute strength, may have forced the mammal into the line of brain-building and placental development. The early development of mammals appears to have been slow. Paleontology proves that they were long surpassed by reptiles and birds. But the little mammal had the future. The battle was to go against the strong.

Once again. The arboreal life of higher mammals would seem to be most easily explained by the view that they were driven to it by stronger carnivorous mammals having possession of the ground. Brain was good, for it planned escape from enemies. But it did not give its possessor immediate victory over muscle, tooth, and claw in the tiger. That was to come far later with the invention of traps and guns. Brain gave its possessor a sure hold of the future, and just enough of the present to enable it to survive by a hard struggle. And the same appears to have been true of primitive man.

Thus all man's ancestors have had to lead a life of continual struggle against overwhelming odds and of seeming defeat. It was a life of hardship, if not of positive suffering. The organ which was to give them future supremacy, whether it was backbone, placenta, or brain, could in its earlier stages aid them only to a hardly won survival. The present apparently, and really as far as freedom from discomfort and danger is concerned, always belongs to forms hopelessly doomed to degeneration or stagnation. Crabs, not primitive

vertebrates, were masters of the good things of the sea; and, in later times, reptiles, not mammals, of those of the land. Any progressive form has to choose between the present and the future. It cannot grasp both. I am not propounding to you any metaphysical theories, but plain, dry, hard facts of paleontology; explain them as you will.

And here we must add our last word about conformity to environment; and it is a most important consideration. Conformity to environment is not such an adaptation as will confer upon an animal the greatest immunity from discomfort or danger, or will enable it to gain the greatest amount of food and place, and produce the largest number of offspring. Indeed, if you will add one element to those mentioned above, namely, that all these shall be attained with the least amount of effort, they insure degeneration beyond a doubt. This is the conformity of the bivalve mollusk. The clam has abundance of food, enormous powers of reproduction, almost perfect protection against enemies, and lives a life of almost absolute freedom from discomfort, and the clam is really lower than most worms.

If an animal is to progress, it must keep such a conformity ever secondary to a still more important element, namely, conformity or obedience to the laws. of its own structure and being. This second element the mollusk and every creeping stage neglected, and the result of this neglect was stagnation or degeneration. Activity was essential to progress from the very structure and laws of development of the animal, while a great abundance of food was not. A life of ease, for the same reason, necessarily results in degeneration.