n's only path to
his destined goal is the straight and narrow road pointed out in the
Bible. If in this we are even fairly successful we shall find a
relation and bond between the Bible and Science worthy of all
consideration. And this is the only agreement which can ever satisfy
us.

If I wished to bring before you a view of the development of man, I
should best choose individuals or families from various periods of
human history from the earliest times down to the present. I should
try to tell you how they looked and lived. But if anyone should
attempt to condense into three lectures such a history of even one
line of the human race, you would probably think him insane. Even if
he succeeded in giving a fairly clear view of the different stages,
the successive stages would be so remote from one another, such vast
changes would necessarily remain unnoticed or unexplained that you
would hardly believe that they could have any genetic relation or
belong to one developmental series.

But the history which I must attempt to condense for you is measured
by ages, and the successive terms of the series will be indefinitely
more remote from each other than the life and thoughts of Lincoln or
Washington from those of our most primitive Aryan ancestor or of the
rudest savage of the Stone Age. The series must appear exceedingly
disconnected. Systems of organs will apparently spring suddenly into
existence, and we shall have no time to trace their origin or
earlier development. Even if we had an abundance of time many gaps
would still remain; for the forms, which according to our theory
must have occupied their place, have long since disappeared and
left no trace nor sign. We have generally no conception at all of
the amount of extermination and degeneration which have taken place
in past ages.

I grant frankly that I do not believe that the forms which I have
selected represent exactly the ancestors of man. They have all been
more or less modified. I claim only that in the balance and relative
development of their organic systems--muscular, digestive, nervous,
etc.--they give us a very fair idea of what our ancestor at each
stage must have been. But it is on this balance and relative
development of the different systems, that is, whether an animal is
more reproductive, digestive, or nervous, that my argument will in
the main be based.

But if the older ancestors have so generally disappeared, and their
surviving relatives h