have them anywhere else, and
that is the reason we of the north are civilized, and that is the
reason that civilization has always been with Winter. That is the
reason that philosophy has been here, and, in spite of all our
superstitions, we have advanced beyond some of the other races, because
we have had this assistance of nature, that drove us into the family
relation, that made us prudent; that made us lay up at one time for
another season of the year. So there is one excuse I have for my race.

I have got another. I think we came from the lower animals. I am not
dead sure of it, but think so. When I first read about it I didn't
like it. My heart was filled with sympathy for those people who have
nothing to be proud of except ancestors. I thought how terrible it
will be upon the nobility of the old world. Think of their being
forced to trace their ancestry back to the Duke Orang-Outang or to the
Princess Chimpanzee. After thinking it all over I came to the
conclusion that I liked that doctrine. I became convinced in spite of
myself. I read about rudimentary bones and muscles. I was told that
everybody had rudimentary muscles extending from the ear into the
cheek. I asked: "What are they?" I was told: "They are the remains of
muscles; that they became rudimentary from the lack of use." They went
into bankruptcy. They are the muscles with which your ancestors used
to flap their ears. Well, at first, I was greatly astonished, and
afterward I was more astonished to find they had become rudimentary.
How can you account for John Calvin unless we came up from the lower
animals? How could you account for a man that would use the extremes
of torture unless you admit that there is in man the elements of a
snake, of a vulture, a hyena, and a jackal? How can you account for the
religious creeds of today? How can you account for that infamous
doctrine of Hell, except with an animal origin? How can you account
for your conception of a God that would sell women and babes into
slavery?

Well, I thought that thing over and I began to like it after a while,
and I said: "It is not so much difference who my father was as who his
son is." And I finally said I would rather belong to a race that
commenced with the skull-less vertebrates in the dim Laurentian seas,
that wriggled without knowing why they wriggled, swimming without
knowing where they were going, that come along up by degrees through
millions of ages, t