Page:Evolution of Life (Henry Cadwalader Chapman, 1873).djvu/12

10 regarded as the descendants of a common stock, represented by extinct forms, like Coryphodon and Lophiodon. Basing the investigation on the facts of Anatomy, Embryology, and Geology, the genealogy of the animal and vegetal kingdoms has, in this manner, been more or less made out, the indefinitely remote ancestors of all plant and animal life being represented by the Monera, structureless, infinitely small, jelly-like beings, belonging neither to the animal nor to the vegetal kingdom. This view of the gradual development of existing forms of life from pre-existing ones is in harmony with the conclusions of other sciences. Most ethnologists are agreed that the different races of men have descended from a common stock, notwithstanding the great differences exhibited in color, shape of the head, and character of the hair. Philologists derive the various languages from one of three or four roots. The history of Art offers us interesting illustrations of the doctrine of Evolution. Thus, the present perfection of music has been attained only through very gradual additions from time to time. Modern orchestration is so complicated that one would hardly believe that it could have been developed out of the simple jingle of barbarians. Astronomers think it highly probable that our solar system was once a chaotic mass, and that from this the planets were thrown off, the central body becoming later the Sun. This theory, which is commonly known as the Nebular Hypothesis of La Place, naturally suggests the name of Kant, the famous philosopher of Königsberg, who first distinctly enunciated the view of the gradual development of the solar system, and the doctrine of Evolution in general. But as the differentiation of the simple into the complex, of the homogeneous into the heterogeneous, of which the development of race and language is an example, has been fully discussed by Mr. Herbert Spencer in his different works, we therefore pass on to the consideration of the objection, that while the