The reaction which we call life was probably as much a cosmic or geologic event as were the reactions which produced the different elements and compounds, and demanded the same slow gestation in the womb of time.  During what cycles upon cycles the great mother-forces of the universe must have brooded over the inorganic before the organic was brought forth!  The archean age, during which the brooding seems to have gone on, was probably as long as all the ages since.

How we are baffled when we talk about the beginning of anything in nature or in our own lives!  In our experience there must be a first, but when did manhood begin; when did puberty, when did old age, begin?  When did each stage of our mental growth begin?  When or where did the English language begin, or the French, or the German?  Was there a first English word spoken?  From the first animal sound, if we can conceive of such, up to the human speech of to-day, there is an infinite gradation of sounds and words.

Was there a first summer, a first winter, a first spring?  There could hardly have been a first day even for ages and ages, but only slowly approximating day.  After an immense lapse of time the air must have cleared and the day become separated from the night, and the seasons must have become gradually defined.  Things slowly emerge one after another from a dim, nebulous condition, both in our own growth and experience and in the development of the physical universe.

In nature there is no first and last.  There is an endless beginning and an endless ending.  There was no first man or first woman, no first bird, or fish, or reptile.  Back of each one stretches an endless chain of approximating men and birds and reptiles.

This talk about the time and place where man began his existence seems to me misleading, because it appears to convey the idea that he began as man at some time, in some place.  Whereas he grew.  He began where and when the first cell appeared, and he has been on the road ever since.  There is no point in the line where he emerged from the not-man and became man.  He was emerging from the not-man for millions of years, and when you put your finger on an animal form and say, This is man, you must go back through whole geologic periods before you reach the not-man.  If Darwin is right, there is no more reason for believing that the different species or forms of animal life were suddenly introduced than there is for believing that the soil, or the minerals, gold, silver, diamonds, or vegetable mold and verdure were suddenly introduced.

II