LANGDON SMI 
 
 rY.WHEN YOU WERE A TADPOLE AND I WAS A 
 
 B 3 315 133 
 
THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 PRESENTED BY 
 
 PROF. CHARLES A. KOFOID AND 
 MRS. PRUDENCE W. KOFOID 
 
VOI ION 
 
 When you were a tadpole 
 and I was a fish" 
 
 By LANGDON SMITH 
 
 Boston, JOHN W. 
 
 LUCE and COMPANY. MCMIX 
 
Copyright, 1909, 
 BY L. E. BASSETT AND COMPANY 
 
> 
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 M375912 
 
"EVOLUTION AND THE MAN WHO 
 WROTE IT 
 
 To weld the theory of soul-transmigration to the 
 reality of evolution was an inspiration that, coming 
 to Langdon Smith in the midst of a busy life, never 
 theless sung itself into his heart with a wealth of poetic 
 meaning and suggestion that found its ultimate ex 
 pression in the verses which so securely link his name 
 with those whom no passing moment can plunge into 
 obscurity. 
 
 In one hundred and eight short lines of poetry he 
 reached back into the geological beginning, picked up 
 the first sparks of life lying inert in the Paleozoic 
 period and brought them side by side into the light 
 of present day civilization and to the highest type of 
 life thus far developed, by stages opposed to no law of 
 nature as interpreted by modern philosopher and scien 
 tist. 
 
 The author did more than this. To have stopped 
 there would have been merely clever, merely the ex 
 pression in poetic form of Darwin s " Descent of Man," 
 
and his epic of Evolution is far more than cleverness, 
 it has the ring of genius. 
 
 The crowning glory of " Evolution " is, perhaps, the 
 manner in which he interwove throughout his master 
 piece of imagination a golden thread of romance that 
 becomes more and more lustrous as the story unfolds. 
 He linked inseparably physical life and spiritual life, 
 the so-called vital and eternal sparks, as, into the web 
 of the lives that evolve, he wove the woof of love and 
 brought them down through the ages together as one. 
 
 " For I loved you even then," he sings as he throws 
 his soul back through the ages to the first vertebrates 
 of the Paleozoic period. Ever together he pictures 
 "life by life," "love by love," "breath by breath," 
 " death by death " and back to " life by life " again, 
 down through every stage of evolution s wonderful path 
 from darkness to light, from trilibite to civilized man. 
 
 The beginning of matter, the dawn of life, the 
 changes through all the eons, the theory that life lives 
 anew and love, the soul, lives eternally with it, Langdon 
 Smith encompassed in his poem. 
 
 And yet he found no need to dispute Huxley, Spen 
 cer, Darwin or Lowell; he saw no reason to rail at 
 
Buddha, Pythagoras, Confucius, Orpheus, Socrates or 
 Jesus. He felt that he had lived in the dim past and 
 that he would live in the lustrous future. He reduced 
 immortality to a science and science to immortality. 
 
 Langdon Smith was born in Kentucky Jan. 4, 1858, 
 and received a common school education at Louisville. 
 In boyhood he served in the Comanche and Apache wars 
 as a trooper, his letters descriptive of these campaigns 
 winning him his first newspaper position. Later he 
 acted as a war correspondent during the extended 
 fighting with the Sioux tribes. In 1894 he married 
 Marie Antoinette Wright and soon after went to Cuba 
 as correspondent for the New York Herald, being a 
 non-combatant on Gen. Maceo s staff during the Cu 
 ban s effort to overthrow Spanish rule. He again went 
 to Cuba at the outbreak of the Spanish- American war 
 as a representative of the New York Journal. One of 
 the first at the front, he was present at all the principal 
 engagements, taking high rank as a war correspondent. 
 
 Aside from his success as a newspaper writer, his 
 novel " On the Pan Handle " met a favourable re 
 ception; his short stories made him still better known, 
 but it is as the author of " Evolution " that he is best 
 
remembered. Skilled as a war correspondent, himself 
 a veteran Indian fighter, a technical writer of sports, 
 possessed of a mentality too great to be handicapped 
 through lack of university training, he thought for him 
 self upon life and death, of the past and future, and 
 in " Evolution " voiced his beliefs. 
 
 The first few stanzas of " Evolution " were written 
 in 1895 and published in the New York Herald where 
 he was then employed. Four years later, when a mem 
 ber of the New York Journal staff, he wrote several 
 more. These he laid aside for a while and then, from 
 time to time, added a stanza until it was completed. 
 Whether the editorial department failed to appreciate 
 the poem, or the foreman of the composing room needed 
 something with which to fill out a page is not known, 
 but " Evolution " first appeared in its entirety in the 
 center of a page of want advertisements in the New 
 York Journal. 
 
 A work of such merit, however, could not be lost. 
 Mr. Smith received thousands of congratulatory let 
 ters from all parts of the world, accompanied by re 
 quests for copies of the poem which were exceedingly 
 difficult to secure until reprinted in April, 1906, in 
 
 iv 
 
" The Scrap Book," edited by Mr. Frank A. Munsey. 
 April eighth, 1908, Langdon Smith died at his home 
 in New York. Admirers of " Evolution " have been 
 struck with the coincidence of his wife s death occurring 
 as it did within five weeks of his own. Their lives and 
 affections linked as they were, in his poetic fancy at 
 least, since the beginning of time seem to have created 
 between them in reality a bond too close to survive a 
 parting. 
 
 LEWIS ALLEN BROWNE. 
 
EVOLUTION 
 
THE FIRST BOOK OF MOSES 
 CALLED GENESIS 
 
 Chapter I 
 
 Verse 1 . In the beginning God created the heaven 
 and the earth. 
 
 Verse 20. And God said, Let the waters bring forth 
 abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and that 
 may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven. 
 
 The paleozoic period, embracing the oldest division 
 of the geological series, may be properly separated into 
 two great divisions, an older and a newer. The newer 
 paleozoic period is distinguished by the number and 
 variety of its fishes and amphibia. Century Dictionary. 
 
 The progenitors of man must have been aquatic in 
 their habits; for morphology plainly tells us that our 
 lungs consist of a modified swine-bladder which once 
 served as a float. Charles Darwin. 
 
 The Cambrian is the lowest of the primary strata 
 exhibiting unmistakable organic remains. 
 
 Percival Lowell. 
 
OLUTION 
 I 
 
 WHEN you were a tadpole and I was 
 
 a fish, 
 In the Paleozoic time, 
 
 prawled through the ooze 
 th many a caudal 
 
 skittered 
 Through 
 brian 
 

 The man of science cannot hesitate. He cannot be 
 lieve that there was actually a break between the inor 
 ganic and the organic evolutions, bridged over by the 
 direct action of the finger of God. He must believe that 
 waving palm trees and toddling children and wave-beaten 
 rocks are alike the present natural outcome of an abso 
 lute sequence of cause and effect, passing back to the 
 blazing star that formed the elements that comprise them. 
 Professor Robert K. Duncan, 
 
 University of Kansas. 
 
 Virtually only six so-called elements go to make up 
 the molecule of life. It is the number of its constituent 
 atoms, and the intricacy of their binding together, that 
 give it the instability to produce vital actions. Carbon, 
 hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, phosphorus and sulphur are 
 all that is required. 
 
 Spontaneous generation is as certain as spontaneous 
 variation, of which it is in fact only an expression. 
 
 Percival Lowell, LL.D., 
 Director of the Lowell Observatory 
 
 The Caradoc sandstone named by Sir Roderick 
 Murchison from the mountain called Caer Caradoc, in 
 Shropshire, consists of shelly sandstones of great thick 
 ness, containing trilobites and many other fossils. 
 
 -Sir Charles Lyell,F.R.S. 
 
 
Mindless we lived and mindless we 
 
 loved, 
 
 And mindless at last we died ; 
 And deep in a rift of the Caradoc 
 
 drift 
 
 We slumbered side by side. 
 The world turned on in the lathe of 
 
 time, 
 
 The hot lands heaved amain, 
 Till we caught our breath from the 
 
 womb of death, 
 And crept into light again. 
 
Organic development proceeded from amoeba to fish, 
 attaining no mean height in the process. But at last a 
 better habitat offered itself, and was speedily appropriated. 
 Weathering of the land and constantly changing chemic 
 processes prepared the continents for organic use. Plants 
 gradually found foothold, and insects an abode. Then 
 came the exodus from the sea. We may picture some 
 adventurous fish, spurred blindly from within, essaying the 
 shore in preference to the main. Finding the littoral not 
 inhospitable, the pioneer was followed by others whom 
 variation had specially endowed. Thus arose the am 
 phibia in the Carboniferous era, visitors only to the solid 
 ground. From them came the reptiles, their descendants, 
 in the Permian, who, from the temporary sojourners their 
 fathers were, developed into permanent denizens of the 
 new abode. From this aboriginal crawling out upon terra 
 firma the organism progressed until finally it came to stand 
 erect and call itself a man. 
 
 Lowell. 
 
 Even footprints of past reptiles confront us, legible still 
 on the hardened sands of time, as if made yesterday in 
 the spots they traversed hundred of centuries ago. 
 
 Lotoell. 
 

 !p 
 
 v. ^ 
 
 *&& 
 
 ^d 
 
 III 
 
 We were Amphibians, scaled and 
 
 tailed, 
 
 ^yi^ And drab as a dead man s hand; 
 
 Illfflii ^ e co il e d at ease neath the dripping 
 
 trees, 
 Or trailed through the mud and 
 
 sand, 
 
 Croaking and blind, with our three- 
 clawed feet 
 
 Writing a language dumb, 
 With never a spark in the empty dark 
 To hint at a life to come. 
 
 V 
 
 mm 
 
Neocomian is the name given the lower division of the 
 cretaceous system formed in part at least by the wearing 
 down of the pre-existing oolithic rocks. The land formed 
 by such rocks was largely submerged before the origin of 
 the white chalk which was formed in a more open sea 
 and in clearer water. Sir Charles Lyell. 
 
 Fresh water formations of the Neocomian period exhibit 
 fossil remains of terrestrial reptiles, the trunks and leaves 
 of land plants. Of this period was the Iguanodon Man- 
 telli, a gigantic lizard a specimen of the thigh-bone of one of 
 which measures twenty-four inches in circumference. The 
 saurians, the largest individuals of the reptile family ever 
 inhabiting the globe, had not at this time entirely disap 
 peared. Sir Charles Lyell. 
 
 With this verse the author ceases to trace the develop 
 ment of life through the early geological formations and 
 lays the scene of the next stanza in the comparatively 
 recent tertiary period. Ed. 
 
Yet happy we lived, and happy we 
 
 loved, 
 
 And happy we died once more; 
 Our forms were rolled in the clinging 
 
 mold 
 
 Of a Neocomian shore. 
 The eons came, and the eons fled, 
 And the sleep that wrapped us 
 
 fast 
 
 Was riven away in a newer day, 
 And the night of death was past. 
 
Unless we wilfully close our eyes we may with our 
 present knowledge approximately recognize our parentage. 
 The Simiadae branched into two great stems, the New 
 World and Old World monkeys; and from the latter at 
 a remote period, man, the wonder and glory of the 
 Universe, proceeded. 
 
 Charles Darwin. 
 
 The great break in the organic chain between man and 
 his nearest allies, which can not be bridged over by any 
 extinct or living species, has often been advanced as a 
 grave objection to the belief that man is descended from 
 some lower form, but this objection will not appear of 
 much weight to those who believe in the general principle 
 of evolution. At some future period the civilized races of 
 man will almost certainly exterminate the savage races of 
 the world. At the same time the anthropomorphous 
 apes will no doubt be exterminated. The break between 
 man and his nearest allies will then be wider, for it will 
 intervene between man in a more civilized state as we 
 may hope even than the Caucasian and some ape as low 
 as a baboon instead of as now between the Negro or 
 Australian and the gorilla. 
 
 Charles Darwin. 
 
Then light and swift through the 
 
 jungle trees 
 
 We swung in our airy flights, 
 Or breathed in the balms of the 
 
 fronded palms, 
 
 In the hush of the moonless nights. 
 And oh! what beautiful years were 
 
 these, 
 When our hearts clung each to 
 
 each; 
 When life was filled, and our senses 
 
 thrilled 
 In the first faint dawn of speech. 
 
The conceptions of God are various, differing widely 
 in different systems of religion and metaphysics ; but they 
 fall in general under two heads : theism, which is most 
 fully developed in Christianity and in which God is 
 regarded as a personal moral being distinct from the uni 
 verse of which he is the author and ruler ; and pantheism, 
 in which God is conceived as not personal and as identi 
 fied with the universe. Century Dictionary. 
 
 The work of Darwin convinced men of the continuity 
 of human with animal evolution as regards all bodily 
 characteristics and prepared the way for the quickly fol 
 lowing recognition of the similar continuity of man s 
 mental evolution with that of the animal world. 
 
 An Introduction to Social Psychology 
 by William McDougali 
 
 I may add the expression of my belief that the attempt 
 to draw a psychical distinction between man and the 
 animal world is equally futile, and that even the highest 
 faculties of feeling and of intellect begin to germinate in 
 lower forms of life. Huxley, 1863. 
 
 Some of us are already convinced that the human soul 
 in all its power is just as much a product of evolution as 
 the body. Q- Stanley Hall 1909. 
 
Thus life by life, and love by love, 
 We passed through the cycles 
 
 strange, 
 And breath by breath, and death by 
 
 death, 
 
 We followed the chain of change. 
 Till there came a time in the law of 
 
 life 
 
 When over the nursing sod 
 The shadows broke, and the soul 
 
 awoke 
 In a strange, dim dream of God. 
 
The cave dwellers of the stone age succeed in point of 
 time an even earlier group of prehistoric men both so 
 ancient that no attempt is made to fix the date of their 
 existence save in geological terms. Ascribed to the 
 Quatenary period, prehistoric man at the coming of the 
 glacial period was obliged by the change of climate to 
 seek the shelter and warmth of caverns, there to take up 
 his abode during the centuries which elapsed before the 
 dawn of a later geological epoch. 
 
 In France particularly the evidences of cave dwellers 
 are numerous. The floors of the caverns occupied by 
 them are found impregnated with their flint implements, 
 the bones of animals on which they lived, many of which 
 are of extinct species. 
 
 Smithsonian Report. 
 
 The aurochs is the European bison, differing but slightly 
 from the American Buffalo. 
 
 Ed. 
 
 The great cave bear is extinct and has been in all his 
 toric time. Its existence is known only from fossil remains 
 and a single engraving on stone in the Prehistoric Museum 
 at Faux. 
 
 Ed. 
 
I was ihewed like an Auroch bull, 
 And tusked like the great Cave 
 
 Bear; 
 And you, my sweet, from head to 
 
 feet, 
 
 Were gowned in your glorious hair. 
 
 Deep in the gloom of a fireless cave, 
 
 When the night fell o er the plain, 
 
 And the moon hung red o er the river 
 
 bed, 
 We mumbled the bones of the slain. 
 
 
The earliest manifestations of human art consisted of 
 the chipping of flint implements, which before the close of 
 the cave dwelling period had reached a state of develop 
 ment both in design and workmanship comparable with 
 those found in use among uncivilized peoples almost down 
 to the present time. 
 
 The spear head of this period was of flint or quartz 
 leaf shaped of considerable length and decreased thick 
 ness, sometimes made with a shoulder on one side to 
 enable its being more firmly attached to the wooden 
 shaft. This last named innovation was the precursor of 
 the notched arrow and spear head which travelled through 
 both hemispheres while civilization was yet young and 
 before history began. 
 
 Smithsonian Report. 
 
 The mammoth, the last survivor of the three species of 
 elephant inhabiting Europe, flourished before and during 
 the glacial period. In size this species exceeded the ele 
 phant of modern times from which it is further distinguished 
 by large curved tusks and a thick coat of hair. 
 
 Ed. 
 
I flaked a flint to a cutting edge, 
 
 And shaped it with brutish craft; 
 I broke a shank from the woodland 
 
 dank, 
 
 And fitted it, head and haft. 
 Then I hid me close to the reedy 
 
 tarn, 
 Where the Mammoth came to 
 
 drink ; 
 Through brawn and bone I drave the 
 
 stone, 
 And slew him upon the brink. 
 
 
The gregarious instinct is one of the human instincts 
 of greatest social importance. Its operation in its simplest 
 form implies none of the higher qualities of mind, neither 
 sympathy nor capacity for mutual aid. 
 
 In civilized communities we may see evidence of the 
 operation of this instinct on every hand. For all but a few 
 exceptional, and generally highly cultivated, persons the 
 one essential condition of recreation is the being one of a 
 crowd. 
 
 Although opinions differ widely as to the form of 
 primitive human society, some inclining to the view that 
 it was a large promiscuous horde, others, with more proba 
 bility, regarding it as a comparatively small group of near 
 blood relatives, almost all anthropologists agree that primi 
 tive man was to some extent gregarious in his habits. 
 
 This gregarious impulse seems generally to be called 
 into play in conjunction with some other instinct, render 
 ing complete satisfaction of its impulse impossible until we 
 are surrounded by others who share our emotion. 
 An Introduction to Social Psychology, by William 
 
 McDougall. 
 
 In calling his kith and kin to the feast the man of the 
 Stone Age displayed his gregarious instinct in conjunction 
 with his instinct of self-assertion and the emotion of ela 
 tion rather than a more developed social sympathy. 
 
 Ed. 
 
Loud I howled through the moonlit 
 
 wastes, 
 
 Loud answered our kith and kin; 
 From west and east to the crimson 
 
 feast 
 
 The clan came trooping in. 
 O er joint and gristle and padded 
 
 hoof, 
 
 We fought, and clawed and tore, 
 And cheek by jowl, with many a 
 
 growl, 
 We talked the marvel o er. 
 
In the museum of Natural History in Paris is an engrav 
 ing found at La Madelaine of a mammoth carved on a 
 fragment of his own tusk. The lofty skull, the bulging 
 forehead, the curved tusks and shaggy hair identify it 
 satisfactorily. It is so well done that one must believe the 
 artist had seen the animal if he did not make the drawing 
 from real life. 
 
 The engraving tools of this period, specimens of which 
 are in the National Museum at Washington, are of flint 
 not dressed to a sharp point from all sides, but V shaped 
 as are the gravers* of to-day. Some of the specimens are 
 quite worn, while others are sharp and could now be 
 used to engrave bones as in the prehistoric times. 
 
 The most wonderful exhibition of art in this epoch was 
 in the representation of animal life. Sometimes the animals 
 are at rest, but many times they are in action. Hunting 
 scenes are depicted in which the hunter, a man, is shown 
 in pursuit of game and in conflict with it. The mammoth, 
 cave bear, reindeer, horse, bison, musk-ox, birds, and 
 others are depicted. Some of these are Arctic animals 
 now, others are extinct. 
 
 These engravings and carvings mark the earliest human 
 expression of the beautiful in art for art s sake and is said 
 to be the first step in evolution from savagery. 
 
 Smithsonian Report. 
 
I carved that fight on a reindeer bone, 
 
 With rude and hairy hand, 
 I pictured his fall on the cavern wall 
 
 That men might understand. 
 For we lived by blood, and the right 
 of might, 
 
 Ere human laws were drawn, 
 And the Age of Sin did not begin 
 
 Till our brutal tusks were gone. 
 
Since the acceptance of the principle of evolution there 
 has come a realization of the continuity in nature which 
 establishes in the mind of man a relation of intimacy with 
 it limited neither by time nor space. The impersonal at 
 titude from which man viewed nature has given place to 
 a sense of kinship with it and with every product of its 
 laws and even with those laws themselves. His thoughts, 
 should he throw them back a million years, have not 
 even then travelled so far as to reach the border land of 
 a time the impress of which he does not bear in his own 
 person. 
 
 Nor is his soul, the moral and emotional part of his 
 nature, less intimately linked to the history of that dim 
 past and each succeeding period of time. The untried 
 soul, whether it lights eyes "deep as the Devon springs" 
 or no, be it howsoever young it may, is yet of the ages. 
 
 For of all the false assumptions on which ethical systems 
 were once founded none was more so than the conception 
 of a special faculty of moral intuition or instinct, a conscience 
 implanted afresh in each human breast as a miraculous 
 gift. 
 
 The truth is, that men are moved by a variety of im 
 pulses whose nature has been determined through long 
 ages of evolutionary process without reference to their 
 life in civilized societies. 
 
 Ed. 
 
And that was a million years ago, 
 
 In a time that no man knows; 
 Yet here to-night in the mellow light, 
 
 We sit at Delmonico s; 
 Your eyes are deep as the Devon 
 springs, 
 
 Your hair is as dark as jet, 
 Your years are few, your life is new, 
 
 Your soul untried, and yet 
 
Kimmeridge clay, the lowest series of the Upper Oolite, 
 consists of dark, bluish gray shaly clay which is sometimes 
 bituminous and occasionally, as at Kimeridge in the Isle of 
 Purbeck, passes into a shale so rich in bituminous matter 
 as to be used as a fuel. The series attains a maximum 
 thickness of 600 feet. 
 
 Chamber s Encyclopaedia. 
 
 Beneath the cretaceous rocks in S. E. England a fresh 
 water formation is found called the Wealden, which is of 
 great interest as being interlaced between two marine 
 formations. It is composed of three minor groups, Weald 
 clay, Hasting sand and Purbeck beds or flags of limestone 
 and marl. The Wealden formation is rich in fossils. The 
 bones of birds of the order of Grallae have been discov 
 ered by Dr. Mantell in the Wealden and appear to be 
 the oldest well-authenticated examples of fossils of this 
 class hitherto found in Great Britain. 
 
 Lyell s Elements of Geology. 
 
 Bagshot sands, or stones, consist of a series of strata 
 overlying the London clay, the name being from Bagshot 
 Heath near Windlesham, Surrey, where they were first 
 examined. They belong to the Eocene system. 
 
 Chamber s Encyclopaedia. 
 
 WlQfl 
 
 At some places, as near Orford, England, the coral 
 line crag is exposed at the surface, and the bottom of it 
 has not been reached at the depth of fifty feet. The crag 
 shell belongs to the older Pliocene period and indicates a 
 temperate climate. 
 
 Lyell s Elements of Geology. 
 
*WJM 
 
 ?j jj) iKL 8H&J 
 
 Our trail is on the Kimmeridge clay, 
 
 And the scarp of the Purbeck flags, 
 We have left our bones in the Bag- 
 shot stones, 
 
 And deep in the Coraline crags; 
 Our love is old, our lives are old, 
 
 And death shall come amain; 
 Should it come to-day, what man may 
 say 
 
 We shall not live again? 
 
I think that one abstains from writing on the immortality 
 of the soul, because, when he comes to the end of his 
 statement, the hungry eyes that run through it will close 
 disappointed ; the listeners say, That is not here which we 
 desire, and I shall be as much wronged by their hasty 
 conclusion, as they feel themselves wronged by my omis 
 sions. I mean that I am a better believer, and all serious 
 souls are better believers, in the immortality that we can 
 give grounds for. The real evidence is too subtle, or is 
 higher than we can write down in propositions, and there 
 fore Wordsworth s " Ode" is the best modern essay on 
 the subject. Is immortality only an intellectual quality, or, 
 shall I say, only an energy, there being no passive ? He 
 has it, and he alone, who gives life to all names, persons, 
 things, where he comes. No religion, not the wildest 
 mythology, dies for him ; no art is lost. He vivifies what 
 he touches. Future state is an illusion for the ever-present 
 state. It is not length of life but depth of life. It is not 
 duration, but a taking of the soul out of time, as all high 
 action of the mind does : when we are living in the senti 
 ments we ask no questions about time. The spiritual world 
 takes place ; that which is always the same. But see 
 how the sentiment is wise. Jesus explained nothing, but 
 the influence of him took people out of time, and they felt 
 eternal. A great integrity makes us immortal : an admi 
 ration, a deep love, a strong will, arms us above fear. 
 
 "Immortality." Ralph Waldo Emerson. 
 
XIII 
 
 God wrought our souls from the 
 
 Tremadoc beds 
 
 And furnished them wings to fly; 
 He sowed our spawn in the world s 
 
 dim dawn, 
 
 And I know that it shall not die; 
 Though cities have sprung above the 
 
 graves 
 Where the crook-boned men made 
 
 war, 
 
 And the ox-wain creaks o er the bur 
 ied caves, 
 
 Where the mummied mammoths 
 are. 
 
 issfll.j 
 
Nietzsche believed that an ideal human society would 
 be one in which a vast, inert, religious, moral slave class 
 stood beneath a small, alert, iconoclastic, immoral, pro 
 gressive master class. He held that this master class 
 this aristocracy of efficiency should regard the slave 
 class as all men now regard the tribe of domestic beasts : 
 as an order of servitors to be exploited and turned to ac 
 count. The aristocracy of Europe, though it sought to do 
 this with respect to the workers of Europe, seemed to him 
 to fail miserably, because it was itself lacking in true effi 
 ciency. Instead of practising a magnificent opportunism 
 and so adapting itself to changing conditions, it stood for 
 formalism and permanence. Its fetish was property in land 
 and the worship of this fetish had got it into such a rut 
 that it was becoming less and less fitted to survive, and 
 was, indeed, fast sinking into helpless parasitism. Its whole 
 color and complexion were essentially apollonic. 
 
 Therefore Nietzsche preached the gospel of Dionysus, 
 that a new aristocracy of efficiency might take the place 
 of this old aristocracy of memories and inherited glories. 
 He believed that it was only in this way that mankind 
 could hope to forge ahead, mankind bent on achieving, 
 not the equality of all men, but the production, at the top, 
 of the superman. 
 
 The Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche, 
 by Henry L. Mencken. 
 
Then as we linger at luncheon here, 
 
 O er many a dainty dish, 
 Let us drink anew to the time when 
 you 
 
 Were a Tadpole and I was a Fish. 
 
FIFTY YEARS OF EVOLUTION 
 
FIFTY YEARS OF EVOLUTION 
 
 By a fortuitous coincidence the one hundredth anni 
 versary of Charles Darwin s birth falls within the same 
 year as that which marks the fiftieth since the publica 
 tion of " The Origin of Species " in which he laid before 
 the world for the first time convincing evidence of the 
 theory of Evolution. 
 
 That a double anniversary of such moment, giving as 
 it did an opportunity to honor on the same occasion both 
 the nobility of the individual himself and his epoch ma 
 king work, would be fittingly celebrated, was universally 
 expected and more than happily realized. The tribute 
 of every scientific body of importance throughout Eu 
 rope and America has been paid to the memory of the 
 dead man and to the ever living, ever waxing revelation 
 of his mind. 
 
 The realization of a new truth, so potent as to uproot 
 the established attitude of mind of perhaps more than 
 one-half of the civilized world toward philosophy and 
 science, is a phenomenon that has been recorded but sel 
 dom, and fortunately; for, the laws of nature make but 
 
 43 
 
slight provision to safeguard against the results of vio 
 lent change whether it be physical or mental and emo 
 tional. 
 
 But such truths have nevertheless at rare intervals 
 blazed across the darkling sky that curtains the yet un- 
 reached limit of human intelligence lighting the beacons 
 on new heights of learning and understanding, 
 heights which once gained have become the permanent 
 heritage of mankind in his advance from whence he 
 views the ever widening aspect of the material and spirit 
 ual world beckoning him forward to paths that lead their 
 winding course through the fertile fields of knowledge 
 to that temple beyond the horizon where dwells the 
 Spirit of Ultimate Comprehension. 
 
 To such a peak Galileo unfalteringly guided the 
 steps of men, though the heel of the advance crushed into 
 dust the philosophy of centuries and the dogma of the 
 church. To such another Newton led the way by his 
 discovery of the laws of gravitation. One of lesser height 
 perhaps, though equally far in the van, was mounted 
 when the principle of the conservation and correlation 
 of forces was demonstrated. 
 
 Can there be a moment s hesitation in adding to this 
 
 44 
 
company the name of Charles Darwin or in recognizing 
 in the watchfire of Evolution the flaming torch which 
 lights the topmost crag in the whole range of human 
 understanding? 
 
 If a doubt lingers in any mind it will vanish on giving 
 a little reflection to the views held by the leading zoolo 
 gists, biologists, theologians, philosophers and indeed the 
 mass of educated men in general before the publication 
 of " The Origin of Species " and comparing such views 
 with those now held either by them or their representa 
 tives of later generations. 
 
 The theologians, who from the beginning of time have 
 accredited themselves as the custodians of all funda 
 mental truth having, by hasty discards of old dogmas, 
 survived the shock of learning that the earth is round, 
 and that the sun, moon and stars are held in place in 
 the universe by the force of gravity, continued to hold 
 as they had for some four thousand years to the theory 
 of individual creation as set forth by the biblical authors. 
 In the main this proposition had passed unchallenged 
 even by scientists, though before Darwin, as he is at 
 pains to record with all possible detail, some naturalists, 
 to make use of a very general term, expressed the opin- 
 
 45 
 
ion that changed conditions of life had given rise to a 
 sufficient differentiation in individual forms to create 
 new species. Nor did Philosophy herself in those days 
 steer her bark far enough from the shores of dogma to 
 catch the broad sweeping current of the law of change. 
 
 Like a meteor, fell " The Origin of Species " into this 
 placid pool of thought, on the banks of which Theology, 
 Philosophy and the youngest of the pilgrims, Science, 
 had halted in their march several years before, and where 
 they still lingered dreaming dreams and telling each 
 other tales of folklore. 
 
 Instantly Science, his young blood and imagination 
 electrified by the message, darted forward on winged 
 feet, his eyes ablaze with the promise of measureless serv 
 ice to mankind. His elder companions paused awhile 
 sniffing the air for brimstone and calling after him to 
 stay his pace, but as in his wake followed first one and 
 then another of their disciples the chill of loneliness fell 
 upon them, and they too set out to overtake, if might 
 be, the leader now far in the distance. 
 
 To restate briefly the principal advanced by Darwin 
 in " The Origin of Species " it may be said that, all 
 forms of living organisms, plants and animals including 
 
 46 
 

 inan, are the lineal descendants of ancestors on the whole 
 somewhat simpler, that these again are descended from 
 yet simpler forms, and so on back to the single cell of 
 living matter the creation of which later scientists, such 
 as Lowell, ascribe to spontaneous chemical action. The 
 rise of the numberless species of living organisms now 
 existent, as well as those whose life history is recorded 
 only by fossil remains in the rocks of past geological 
 eras, Darwin attributes chiefly to natural selection dur 
 ing a long course of descent, aided in an important man 
 ner by the inherited effect of the use or disuse of parts, 
 and in an unimportant manner by external conditions 
 and by variations. 
 
 So far reaching has been the effect, in all departments 
 of science, occasioned by the changed viewpoint from 
 which subsequent investigations have been conducted, 
 that no words can adequately express it. 
 
 True, we the great mass of mankind, without special 
 ized scientific knowledge continue incapable of original 
 investigation, often even unable to fathom the terminol 
 ogy employed in the treatment of the less familiar sub 
 jects. To us the intricacies and minutiae of science con 
 tinue as a sealed book, but the far reaching principle of 
 
 47 
 
evolution, in its wide application, now that our thoughts 
 have been intelligently directed toward it, presents itself 
 with so strong an appeal to our faculty of common-sense 
 and its simpler evidences are so clearly within range of 
 our observation that only one of unreceptive mind 
 reaches man s estate without consciousness of the change, 
 the development, the evolution in the world about him 
 even during the few short years of his existence. 
 Through this consciousness he, too, acquires a viewpoint 
 from which evolutionary law unfolds itself, as a natural 
 expression of the known forces of nature. 
 
 While Darwin in " The Origin of Species " refrained 
 from attempting to trace in detail the genealogy of any 
 particular species, certain conclusions were obvious by 
 analogy. The most revolutionary of these imaginatively, 
 though not scientifically, pointed directly to the origin 
 of the human race. These inferences a few years later 
 he presented with all the evidence at his command in 
 " The Descent of Man." 
 
 The shock produced did not spring directly from 
 the biological revelations nor from the realization that 
 the nearest extant ancestors of the lower races of man 
 are the anthropoid apes, but rather from the blow it dealt 
 
 48 
 
the enormous vanity and egoism of the human species. 
 This egoism had built up out of itself the conception 
 that the universe had its being solely to accommodate 
 the needs of man who was of truth its centre ; and having 
 conceived the idea of a personal god insisted that he 
 bore the image of man. Correlative conclusions of dis 
 tinct creation and ready made mystical endowments 
 peculiar to his order, which as man was the classifier 
 he had declared to be entirely separate and unrelated to 
 any other order, naturally followed. 
 
 The disturbance of man s ideas of himself was in no 
 sense lessened by the knowledge that his material com 
 fort and well being were certain to be benefited by dis 
 coveries inspired by evolution nor that no tangible pos 
 session acquired during his entire history was endan 
 gered. A child of his imagination, the natural offspring 
 of his introspective and self -centered habit alone was 
 struck down. Yet to recover his mental balance was all 
 the harder for that very reason and not only on account 
 of the long period through which his erroneous concep 
 tion of himself had persisted but also because his spirit 
 ual concepts, systematized into religious dogma, had be 
 come interwoven with it A supernatural or divine 
 
 49 
 
authority was claimed for these dogmas which were 
 dependent for their existence primarily on a mainte 
 nance of man s exaggerated egoism and incidentally on 
 his continued affirmation of the accuracy of historical 
 religious records at variance with the truth as demon 
 strable facts satisfying to his more developed powers of 
 reasoning assured him. 
 
 Nevertheless with rapidly increasing momentum man 
 is adapting himself to the more inspiring view which a 
 comprehension of his own place in the universe has given 
 him. 
 
 No lessening of the spiritual quality in his nature 
 comes with the growing understanding of nature, but 
 true to the universal law of evolutionary advance, it ex 
 pands. Though every dogma religion has hitherto pro 
 duced is probably false and destined to be discarded, yet 
 there can be no apprehension that with them will depart 
 religious feeling or spiritual sensitiveness. The passion 
 ate outcry raised on every hand when it was appreciated 
 that Darwin s discoveries meant the recasting of sub 
 stantially all established beliefs was not necessary to con 
 vince the world that ideas and emotions, the resultant 
 of mental operations, are far more real and hold a firmer 
 
 50 
 
place in man s heart than any tangible product of his or 
 nature s hand. Scarcely is there a page of history but 
 bears upon its face this testimony. 
 
 As further and further man projects his intelligence 
 into the realms of space, as deeper and deeper he pene 
 trates into nature s mysteries, he gradually overcomes 
 the tendency to attempt the formularization of it all in 
 terms of self. His whole personality becomes more fluid 
 and vibrates in ever closer unison with the majestic 
 forces of Cosmos. From such an approach comes an 
 irresistible stimulus to all that is spiritual in him, to all 
 that quality underlying the consciousness that the prime 
 realities are the intangible and not those known to the 
 sensory organs. In such an approach lies also the sur 
 est promise that psychology, having taken as its watch 
 word, " the necessary acquirement of each mental capac 
 ity by gradation," will, profiting by that unison, disclose 
 to our intelligence the secret by which we may grasp 
 mentally those spiritual realities with as strong a sen 
 sory assurance as we now do the tangible. 
 
RETURN CIRCULATION DEPARTMENT 
 
 TO ^ 202 Main Library 
 
 LOAN PERIOD 1 
 HOME USE 
 
 2 3 
 
 4 
 
 5 6 
 
 ALL BOOKS MAY BE RECALLED AFTER 7 DAYS 
 
 SESS^ 
 
 DF Mi:WALS CALL <415) 642-3405 
 
 DUE AS STAMPED BELOW 
 
 A!?fl DISC MAR !<; 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 JAN13199Z 
 
 
 
 t **VLc;i VED jj 1 
 
 H III r| /* 
 
 r 
 
 
 JAN 1 6 tgg? 
 
 
 
 CIRCULATION DE 
 
 T. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 . 
 
 
 
 J!\N F l 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY 
 FORM NO. DD6, 60m, 1/83 BERKELEY, CA 94720 
 
U.C. BERKELEY LIBRARIES