For the most part the barbarian races do not progress.  Their exceptional minds or characters do not lead the tribes to higher planes of thought, In all countries we still see these barbarous people which man in his progress has left behind.  Our civilization is like a field of light that fades off into shadows and darkness.  There is this margin of undeveloped humanity on all sides.  Always has it been so in the animal life of the globe; the higher forms have been pushed up from the lower, and the lower have remained and continued to multiply unchanged.

It seems as if some central and cherished impulse had pushed on through each form, and by successive steps had climbed from height to height, gaining a little here and a little there, intensifying and concentrating as time went on, very vague and diffuse at first, embryonic so to speak, during the first half of the great geologic year, but quickening more and more, differentiating more and more, delayed and defeated many times, no doubt, yet never destroyed, leaving form after form unchanged behind it, till it at last reached its goal in man.

After evolution has done all it can do for us toward solving the mystery of creation, much remains unsolved.

Through evolution we see creation in travail-pains for millions of years to bring forth the varied forms of life as we know them; but the mystery of the inception of this life, and of the origin of the laws that have governed its development, remains.  What lies back of it all?  Who or what planted the germ of the biological tree, and predetermined all its branches?  What determined one branch to eventuate in man, another in the dog, the horse, the bird, or the reptile?

From the finite or human point of view we feel compelled to say some vaster being or intelligence must have had the thought of all these things from the beginning or before the beginning.

It is quite impossible for me to believe that fortuitous variation—­variation all around the circle—­could have resulted in the evolution of man.  There must have been a predetermined tendency to variation in certain directions.  To introduce chance into the world is to introduce chaos.  No more would the waters of the interiors of the continents find their way to the sea, were there not a slant in that direction, than could haphazard variation, though checked and controlled by natural selection, result in the production of the race of man.  This view may be only the outcome of our inevitable anthropomorphism which we cannot escape from, no matter how deep we dive or high we soar.

II

THE DIVINE ABYSS

I