omes to view our species as a kind of animal, and as a single one of the
hundreds of thousands of known forms of life; thus the question of human
origin is but a small part of organic evolution, which is itself only an
episode in the great sweep of cosmic evolution, endless in past time and
in the future. Were we some other order of beings, and not men, human
evolution would appear to us in its proper scientific proportions, namely,
as a minute fraction of the whole progress of the world.

While the foregoing statements are true, it is nevertheless right that a
close study should be made of the particular case of mankind. No doubt
much of the naturalist's interest in nature at large is due to his
conviction that the laws revealed by the organisms of a lower sphere must
hold true for man, and may explain many things that cannot be so clearly
discerned when only the highest type is the subject of investigation. It
is only too evident that little more than a general outline can be given
of the wide subject or group of subjects included under the head of human
evolution. We must divide the subject logically into parts, so that each
one may be taken up without being complicated by questions relating to
topics of another category, although the findings in any one department
must surely be of importance for comparison with the results established
in another section; for if evolution is universally true, the main
conclusion in any case must assist the investigation of another, just as
comparative anatomy and embryology supplement and corroborate each other
in the larger survey of organic evolution. As before, the illustrations of
each department of the subject must be selected from the stock of everyday
observation and information that we already possess, for we gain much when
we realize that evolution includes all the happenings of everyday life and
thought, as well as the occurrences of the remote past.

For the present, then, the questions relating to the higher aspects of
human life must be put aside, only that they may be taken up at the last.
Social evolution likewise finds its place in a later section, after the
phenomena of mind and mental evolution receive due attention and
description. At the present juncture, the human species presents itself as
a subject for organic analysis and classification, merely as a physical
organism. Just as the study of locomotives must begin with the detailed
structure of machines in the wo