Nature never contradicts herself; she has established a universal law that all matter, organic as well as inorganic, commences from a point or germ in the crystallization of the material of which the earth itself is composed. The process commences from the aggregation of a few particles, until the whole mass assumes its definite characteristic configuration. In the organic there is invariably an ovum, a punctum saliens, from which the parts are gradually accumulated until the future animal has assumed its definite condition to sustain independent life. The seed, which is the germ of the future plant, undergoes a similar process. It is thus, by the gradual addition of new parts that the animal chain is raised from the lowest forms of life, to that of the highest mammals.

The most perfect illustration of this principle or law, is that the analogous ovum exists in all animals. No microscopic examination can demonstrate a distinctive peculiarity in the ovum of the frog or in that which will form the future man.

In the uterus of all the mammalia every shade of development takes place, from the simple molecule, which day by day becomes more complicated, until the future being has evolved all the parts essential to maintain existence in conformity with the parent animal.

It is most difficult to imagine how a specific type of animal existence could emerge into one, equally distinct, of a higher state; a priori, it would occur that the condition that would change the one would equally transpose the whole. How could superiority of physical structure alone cause such an evolution? The smaller animals are equally perfect, and are as prolific as the larger. Size is merely an accidental physical condition. It does not of itself warrant the supposition that because of this condition per se, another or higher class could emerge solely from sexual causes.

No one who examines an ordinary fowl egg can discover the rudiments of the future animal. Still, by the mere application of heat, an evolution takes place, until bones, bloodvessels, nerves, brain; in fine, all the organs of the perfect fowl are formed. In this simplest of all processes - the mere continuance of a temperature about 60° Fahrenheit - all the necessary conditions exist. But it must not be forgotten that this egg had first to be matured in the body of the fowl; her vitality had communicated the condition of future life. The eggs or ova of animals of different orders are in this incipient stage apparently alike. The egg of the crocodile and that of the turkey, the ostrich, or the turtle, have no great difference in their component parts. Still, on being acted on by caloric, they bring forth creatures of the most dissimilar conformation and habits in conformity with the parent animal.

It is certainly the most natural supposition that the animal chain should have ascended from the simplest forms of existence, as seen in the Ascidian, which possesses the rudiments of a chorda dorsalis, so to speak. But where is the necessity of this special evolution, when an ovum possessing to all appearance the identical characteristics is developed into a distinct animal?

Does it not occur to those who advocate this doctrine, that if a condition existed that would cause a lower species to emerge into a higher, none of the lower would exist, or at least they would also be converted into intermediate stages of a higher state of development? It is begging the whole question to imagine that the lower animals select a particular class for propagation; there is no evidence in confirmation that this is the case. If this were so, does it not follow that a portion of a specific class or type would be transmuted into a higher, leaving the other portion in statu quo?

We are driven to the necessity of admitting that particular portions of the earth became electro-chemically conditioned, so as to cause the evolution of a higher development of animal organization. In this respect it is equally as difficult to imagine, in an abstract sense, the development from the alligator to the dog, as from the dog to the monkey, or from the monkey to the lowest type of mankind. It is quite certain that these have an increased cerebral development.

That man has always been "the glory and wonder of the universe" is not the fact; he was for ages on ages a mere vagabond, itinerant wanderer, the most helpless and least noble of the animal kingdom. He could not compare with them in strength, in fleetness, in vision, in hearing, in smelling; in fine, he led a precarious, miserable existence, as is now the case with low savage tribes.

The Caribbean Indian, the Bosjesmen, Mandans, Australians, the natives of the Society Islands, are appropriate types of the human family which lived and flourished in low states of the "vital element," or conditions of the earth's electro-chemical vibrations, which at distant periods was not fitted for high mental development.

Intellectual man, in the few thousand years of historic knowledge, must be measured as if he were of yesterday. He has only now just commenced developing his thinking faculties. He was originally imitative and imaginative; exceptionally inductive or reasoning. Now we find him making application of his mentality or brain function to the purposes and prolongation of his well-being, the only rational mode of utilizing his superiority.

The application of steam and electricity to the purposes of life is a stride so gigantic, that all the Egyptians, Grecians, and Romans did in the zenith of their greatness sinks into insignificance in the comparison.

The annihilation of time and space may now entitle man to be "the glory and wonder of the universe."

It is impossible to measure time, in a geological sense, in millions or thousands of millions of years. All we know is, that at vast periods the most complete changes have taken place on the surface of our planet. In various stratifications we discover definite forms of animal existence, and these are uniform in all parts of the earth. It is not presuming too much in saying that these conditions were fitted for the organizations discovered and for none other. If therefore a special condition was only appropriate for an animal of a special development, why should not another condition be fitted for a higher? It was necessary that a lower condition of life should exist prior to a further advance in the animal chain. Did it necessarily follow that the advance was effected by an evolution or emergence from the lower? If we admit the theory that one class of animals could evolve from themselves another of higher development, we are forced to the conclusion that at remote epochs, in certain zones of the earth, the creative function existed from definite local electro-chemical or telluric states of the earth at those zones.

This change must have been inconceivably gradual.