Show I EVOLUTION OF MAN I Extract From Lecture by William Thurston Brown at Unitarian Church C It has long l ng been evident that thinking men and women those who have received the training of the schools and modern literature cannot any an longer think as asI their hell I remote ancestors thought They TIey are making the same discovery as one of the apostles who said When hen I was a child I spoke as 8 a child I thought as a child childr I r understood as a child pow now that I am become a man I have put away awa childish things But it n far tar greater necessity is s making Its ire appearance in our human life the ne of ot change chanSe in mens way of living Men are demanding a reason for living a justification of life itself and nd especially of the conditions under which it must for so s many of them be lived To discover the i of social progress says Henry Henr Drummond Dr is the ambition he might have said the passion of this age There Is an extraordinary Interest abroad about the present world a yearning desire not from curious but for practical reasons to find some light upon the course and as the goal comes nearer the eagerness passes asses into suspense to know the shortest short shortest shortest est and quickest road to reach it Hence the fhe ascent of man is not only the noblest problem which science can ever study but the practical bearings of this theme are te great ST at beyond any an other on the roll of knowledge What hat does science say as to the origin and evolution of man physical anil and PS It declares with absolute confidence confidence dence denee that man Is simply the result of a process of selection adaptation and andr hange r covering probably a million years c c l more from the lowest orders of life lite The Missing Link 1 1 used to be said that there is a miss missuS hg ay uS link in the chain of evidence for tor the truth of mans animal origin It was sup supposed fr posed by many people that unless a series ot or remains could be found marking a per perIe lect Ie t and complete gradation from man back to the ape the evolutionary i t sis so far as man is concerned would fall It Is well known today that not even i the tha finding of such a series of remains add as much convincing weight to this theory as certain other forms of evi evidence evidence evidence dence accessible to anyone But there thereAs is As no missing link of evidence even cven in that respect The chain is complete The climax of evolutionary proof was bound by b the distinguished German scientist scientist scientist Haeckel There is among living beings a curious law Young animals very ver frequently resemble the ancestors of their whole race more nearly than adult ani animals animals animals mals A frog fro in the tadpole stage still sUll frog resembles a fish which breathes in the water through gills Indeed as a tadpole t lives wholly in the water and cannot live He out of ot the water But in Its later tage Stage as a frog it becomes amphibian rho he toad begins life exactly as a fish does doea but later becomes a land animal A bird bird b rd In the egg ege eg shows for a while a great treat mass of vertebrae in its toil tall which ono once characterized c the extinct a transitional form between lizard and bird existing millions of years ago The gorilla chimpanzee and orangutan re temble man Amore more In proportion as ashey they are lire younger The giant gorilla the most ferocious of the anthropoid apes in its baby stage resembles a human being very ery closely and the gibbon at a certain stage In the embryo shows almost no difference of It variation from the human being at a similar stage It la is quite true as 85 a scientist scientist scientist has said A dog doS a frog a philos philosopher philosopher philosopher opher and a worm cannot for a long time after lifter their embryonic beginning be dis distinguished dish from each other Every human hu human human h man being at the beginning of ot his organic existence existence Is a protozoan at another stage of ot development he is a tiny mass of cells without blood or nerves the tha gastrula later he Is a worm with a pulsating tube Instead of a heart and a without head neck spinal column or or limbs again he Is a fish with a two chambered heart and gills just like fishes still later he lIe is a reptile with a heart and finally at birth he Is a quadruped At one stage inthe in inthe the embryonic career the th human being isan Is Isan Isan an exact miniature of a monkey and cov covered co cored covered ered red with fur From Single Cell There can be no question as to the meaning of or these facts They The are the tha preserved picture of the whole long process proc process process ess through which the human race in its evolution from the lowest forms torms has passed They represent the ancestral wanderings of the human race from a single cell up to what it has become It must be said too that mans physic physical al organism can hardly be claimed as the th of a definite conscious plan in the ordinary meaning of ot those terms Man Inn has bas hands and a vertical spine and walks on his hind limbs because his ancestors I lived hed In trees The habit of using the pos posterior posterior tenor limbs for tor locomotion and the anterior an anterior anterior for and the resulting perpendicular ar are peculiarities developed by bv our simian ancestors wholly on ac account account account count of ot the Incentive to such structure and posture afforded by their arboreal life It If there had been no forests on the earth there would have bave been no Incentive to the perpendicular and the human form torm would I 1 II t I I have be been n inconceivably different from what it Is today What does this teaching of modern science science science ence mean for mankind What is its bearing on our human problems It de depends depends depends a good deal on how a man sees this panorama of evolution whether his testimony testimony testimony mony is worth much or little In regard to the greater questions of religion and life There Is a backward look and there Is a forward look It Is infinitely more worth orth while to contemplate the fact that out of star dust a man with all the fac faculties faculties faculties and capacities we know him to pos possess possess sess seas has been evolved than merely to be obsessed by the idea that man belongs to the order of apes and traces his lineage back to a worm or a bug The significant thing in the evolutionary process is not the worm or 01 bug or fish or reptile or rodent or monkey or ape the significant thing Is man and man all through the process It is not worm or fish or mon key or ape that we see anywhere in the moving panorama of evolution these are but departures from the upward line H is man emerging through these various disguises one day dB to stand erect with face faco turned from the clod climbing by means of faculties and powers of which all that animal evolution scarcely gives a hint far farup farup farup up into spheres of being and aspiration and thinking which science as yet et possesses pos possesses no rod with which to measure Evolution is an ascending scale and Its meaning must be he se seen n In the end rather Ithan than in the beginning In Man Himself But science has established the fact tact that all the elements of religion are in man himself The rhe sanction of religion Is not to be found In some alleged revelation handed down from the Ignorant and sav savage savage savage age past or the ignorant and superstitious present but fresh and clear in every human hu bu human buman man soul that conies comes upon the earth The decision whether we wy w shall go on and up in this path of evolution in which our feet were set so long ago ao or whether we shall become like these brute com comrades comrades comrades rades of that long march sad reminders of the failure to make those adaptations and changes by which they would have belonged In the direct lineage of man Human Hu Human Human man groups have also fallen by the way and It Is possible for the group to which we belong to fail fall In Its upward march To make righteousness the polar star of 0 our Journey journeys is to hold the clue which shall bring us to the light is to become co coworkers coworkers coworkers workers with the Infinite Soul and shar sharers sharers sharers ers now and here of the eternal life |