Joseph McCabe

“ Before we come to tell the fortunes of our little earth we have to see how matter is gathered into these stupendous globes of fire, how they come sometimes to have smaller bodies circling round them on which living things may appear, how they supply the heat and light and electricity that the living things need, and how the story of life on a planet is but a fragment of a larger story. We have to study the birth and death of worlds, perhaps the most impressive of all the studies that modern science offers us. ”

“ Imagine some early continent with its population of animals and plants. Each bay, estuary, river, and lake, each forest and marsh and solid plain, has its distinctive inhabitants. Imagine this continent slowly sinking into the sea, until the advancing arms of the salt water meet across it, mingling their diverse populations in a common world, making the fresh-water lake brackish or salt, turning the dry land into swamp, and flooding the forest. ”

“ An ingenious student of science once entertained his generation with a theory of how one might behold again all the stirring chapters that make up the story of the earth. The living scene of our time is lit by the light of the sun, and for every few rays that enter the human eye, and convey the image of it to the human mind, great floods of the reflected light pour out, swiftly and indefinitely, into space. Imagine, then, a man moving out into space more rapidly than light, his face turned toward the earth. ”

“ Are we evolving to-day? Is man the last word of evolution? These are amongst the commonest questions put to me. Whether man is or is not the last word of evolution is merely a verbal quibble. Now that language is invented, and things have names, one may say that the name "man" will cling to the highest and most progressive animal on earth, no matter how much he may rise above the man of to-day. But if the question is whether he WILL rise far above the civilisation of to-day, we can, in my opinion, give a confident answer. There is no law of evolution, but there is a fact of evolution. ”

“ Imagine this dense assemblage of dull, flowerless trees pervaded by a hot, dank atmosphere, with no change of seasons, with no movement but the flying of large and primitive insects among the trees and the stirring of the ferns below by some passing giant salamander, with no song of bird and no single streak of white or red or blue drawn across the changeless sombre green, and you have some idea of the character of the forests that are compressed into our seams of coal. ”

“ Before the law of gravitation had been discovered it was almost impossible to regard the universe as other than a small and compact system. We shall see that a few daring minds pierced the veil, and peered out wonderingly into the real universe beyond, but for the great mass of men it was quite impossible. To them the modern idea of a universe consisting of hundreds of millions of bodies, each weighing billions of tons, strewn over billions of miles of space, would have seemed the dream of a child or a savage. ”

“ The phrase, however, the Age of Reptiles, is a fitting and true description of the greater part of the Mesozoic Era, which lies, like a fertile valley, between the Permian and the Chalk upheavals. From the bleak heights of the Permian period, or—more probably—from its more sheltered regions, in which they have lingered with the ferns and cycads, the reptiles spread out over the earth, as the summer of the Triassic period advances. In the full warmth and luxuriance of the Jurassic they become the most singular and powerful army that ever trod the earth. ”

“ Men were beginning to think in millions, to gaze boldly into deep abysses of space, to talk of vast fiery globes that made the earth insignificant But the splendid energy gradually failed, and the long line was closed by Ptolemaeus, who once more put the earth in the centre of the system, and so imposed what is called the Ptolemaic system on Europe. The keen school-life of Alexandria still ran on, and there might have been a return to the saner early doctrines, but at last Alexandrian culture was extinguished in the blood of the aged Hypatia, and the night fell. ”

“ One great idea pervades all the theories of the evolution of worlds, and that idea is firmly established. The stars and their planets are enormous aggregations of cosmic dust, swept together and compressed by the action of gravitation. The precise nature of this cosmic dust—whether it was gas, meteorites and gas, or other particles—is open to question.
As we saw in the first chapter, the universe has the word evolution written, literally, in letters of fire across it. The stars are of all ages, from sturdy youth to decrepit age, and even to the darkness of death. ”

“ Most of Europe north of the Thames and the Danube, nearly all Canada and a very large part of the United States, and a somewhat less expanse of Northern Asia, bear to this day the deep scars of the thick, moving ice-sheets. Exposed rock-surfaces are ground and scratched, beds of pebbles are twisted and contorted hollows are scooped out, and moraines—the rubbish-heaps of the glaciers—are found on every side. ”

“ With the close of the Chalk period, however, we take a long stride in the direction of the modern world. The Tertiary Era will, in the main, prove a fresh period of genial warmth and fertile low-lying regions. During its course our deciduous trees and grasses will mingle with the palms and pines over the land, our flowers will begin to brighten the landscape, and the forms of our familiar birds and mammals, even the form of man, will be discernible in the crowds of animals. At its close another mighty period of selection will clear the stage for its modern actors. ”

“ We are just beginning to realise what a wonderful light it throws on the upward advance of animals and plants. No one in the scientific world to-day questions that, however imperfect the record may be, there has been a continuous development of life from the lowest level to the highest. But why there was advance at all, why the primitive microbe climbs the scale of being, during millions of years, until it reaches the stature of humanity, seems to many a profound mystery. ”

“ Yet we must preface the story of the earth with at least a general outline of the larger story of the universe. No sensible man is humbled or dismayed by the vastness of the universe. When the human mind reflects on its wonderful scientific mastery of this illimitable ocean of being, it has no sentiment of being dwarfed or degraded. It looks out with cold curiosity over the mighty scattering of worlds, and asks how they, including our own world, came into being. ”

“ Europe entered upon the phase of evolution which we call modern times.
The future of humanity cannot be seen even darkly, as in a glass. No forecast that aspires beyond the immediate future is worth considering seriously. If it be a forecast of material progress, it is rendered worthless by the obvious consideration that if we knew what the future will do, we would do it ourselves. If it is a forecast of intellectual and social evolution, it is inevitably coloured by the intellectual or social convictions of the prophet. ”

“ It was increasingly felt, as the nineteenth century wore on, that the atoms had themselves been evolved out of some simpler material, and that ether might turn out to be the primordial chaos. There were even those who felt that ether would prove to be the one source of all matter and energy. And just before the century closed a light began to shine in those deeper abysses of the submaterial world, and the foundations of the universe began to appear. ”

“ Hence at nearly every great stage in the upward procession through the ages some regiment of plants or animals has dropped out, and it represents to-day the stage of life at which it ceased to progress. In other words, when we survey the line of the hundreds of thousands of species which we find in nature to-day, we can trace, amid their countless variations and branches, the line of organic evolution in the past; just as we could, from actual instances, study the evolution of a British house, from the prehistoric remains in Devonshire to a mansion in Park Lane or a provincial castle. ”

“ No one but a fanatical adherent of extreme theories of heredity will deny that the physical surroundings of a race continue to be of great importance. The progress of a particular people may often be traced in part to its physical environment; especially to changes of environment, by migration, for instance. Further, it is not for a moment suggested that a race never evolves its own culture, but has always to receive it from another. If we said that, we should be ultimately driven to recognise culture, like the early Chinese, as a gift of the gods. ”

“ Under the shelter of the "Roman Peace" the peoples of Europe could spare men from the plough and the sword for the cultivation of art and letters. The civilisations of Britain, France, Germany, Spain, North Africa, and Italy were ushered into the calendar of mankind, and were ready to bear the burden when the mighty city on the Tiber let the sceptre fall from its enfeebled hands.
Rome fell. The more accurate historians of our time correct the old legend of death from senile decay or from the effect of dissipation. Races of men, like races of animals, do not die; they are killed. ”

“ It has seemed advisable to take this further glance at the general principles and current theories of evolution before we extend our own procedure into the Tertiary Era. The highest types of animals and plants are now about to appear on the stage of the earth; the theatre itself is about to take on a modern complexion. The Middle Ages are over; the new age is breaking upon the planet. We will, as before, first survey the Tertiary Era as a whole, with the momentous changes it introduces, and then examine, in separate chapters, the more important phases of its life. ”

“ The whole region to the east of the Mediterranean was just as fitted to develop a civilisation as the valley of the Nile. It swarmed with peoples having the latest Neolithic culture, and, as they advanced, and developed navigation, the territory of many of them became the high road of more advanced peoples. A glance at the map will show that the easiest line of expansion for a growing people was westward. The ocean lay to the right of the Babylonians, and the country north and south was not inviting. The calmer Mediterranean with its fertile shores was the appointed field of expansion. ”

“ Then, either from the sheer heat of the compression, or from the formation of large and unstable atomic systems (radium, etc.) , or both, the great mass becomes a cauldron of fire, mantled in its own vapours, and the story of a star is run. It dies out in one part of space to begin afresh in another. We see nothing in the nature of a beginning or an end for the totality of worlds, the universe. The life of all living things on the earth, from the formation of the primitive microbes to the last struggles of the superman, is a small episode of that stupendous drama, a fraction of a single scene. ”

“ You detect all the chief phases of the making of a world in the forms and fires of these colossal aggregations of matter. Like the chance crowd on which you may look down in the square of a great city, they range from the infant to the worn and sinking aged. ”

“ When a region sinks slowly below the waves, no matter how insensible the subsidence may be, there will often come a time of sudden and vast inundations, as the higher ridges of the coast just dip below the water-level and the lower interior is flooded. When two invading arms of the sea meet at last in the interior of the sinking continent, or when a land-barrier that has for millions of years separated two seas and their populations is obliterated, we have a similar occurrence of sudden and far-reaching change. The whole story of the earth is punctuated with small cataclysms. ”

“ Whence came the new race and its culture? It will be seen on reflection that we have so far been studying the evolution of man in Europe only, because there alone are his remains known with any fullness. But the important region which stretches from Morocco to Persia must have been an equally, if not more, important theatre of development. While Europe was shivering in the last stage of the Ice-Age, and the mammoth and reindeer browsed in the snows down to the south of France, this region would enjoy an excellent climate and a productive soil. ”

“ Let us pass beyond the Tertiary Era for a moment, and examine the earliest and most primitive remains we have of human or semi-human beings.
The first appearance of man in the chronicle of terrestrial life is a matter of great importance and interest. Even the least scientific of readers stands, so to say, on tiptoe to catch a first glimpse of the earliest known representative of our race, and half a century of discussion of evolution has engendered a very wide interest in the early history of man. ”

“ Insects, birds, and mammals spread into vast and varied groups in every land. Had any of the great Mesozoic reptiles survived, the warmer age might have enabled them to dispute the sovereignty of the advancing mammals. But nothing more formidable than the turtle, the snake, and the crocodile (confined to the waters) had crossed the threshold of the Tertiary Era, and the mammals and birds had the full advantage of the new golden age. The fruits of the new trees, the grasses which now covered the plains, and the insects which multiplied with the flowers afforded a magnificent diet. ”

“ Darwin was right. It is—not exclusively, but mainly—the struggle for life that has begotten higher types. Must every step of future progress be won by fresh and sustained struggle? At least we may say that the notion that progress in the future depends, as in the past, upon the pitting of flesh against flesh, and tooth against tooth, is a deplorable illusion. Such physical struggle is indeed necessary to evolve and maintain a type fit for the struggle. ”

“ The battle of the future lies between wit and wit, art and art, generosity and generosity; and a great struggle and rivalry may proceed that will carry the distinctive powers of man to undreamed-of heights, yet be wholly innocent of the passion-lit, blood-stained conflict that has hitherto been the instrument of progress. ”