Page:The World's Most Famous Court Trial - 1925.djvu/251

Rh spine. In relation to the total dimensions of the body, the brain of monkeys is quite small, that of the apes is much larger, while that of man is largest of all. This determines in large degree the contour of the head; thus the face of the monkey occupies more space than the top and back of its head, that of the apes is comparatively smaller, while the face of man is smallest of all in relation to the total area of head surface. No one would be surprised or shocked to learn that apes and monkeys had a common ancestor, nor would he regard it as a startling scientific theory, yet in general there are more differences between the modern monkeys and the modern apes, such as the chimpanzee, the gorilla, the gibbon and the orangoutang than there are between the apes and man. Yet in general there are more differences between the apes and man than there are between the existing races of men. The gaps between these various groups are, however, largely filled by the fossils, some of which I have already described. There are in truth no missing links in the record which connects man with the other members of the order of primates.

Such facts as I have stated above can be explained only by the conclusion that man has been formed through long processes of progressive development, which when traced backward through successively simpler types of life, each living in more remote antiquity, lead unerringly to a single primordial cell. The facts ascertained by natural science are obviously incomplete; the record of the rocks by no means tells the whole story. Man not only has an efficient and readily adaptable body, he also possesses a knowledge of moral law, a sense of rightness, a confidence that his reasoning mind finds response in a rational universe, and a hope that his spiritual aspirations will find increasing answer in a spiritual universe. Such things as these cannot be preserved in the fossil record, yet their presence must be accounted for. Nor have we a direct record of whence came the first living cells. The inference is unmistakable that material substances from which living cells were first constructed were previously present among the rocks and minerals of the earth. Al the necessary ingredients were certainly present in the outer shell of the youthful earth of even pre-Archeozoic time. But life is something more than matter. Living creatures are characterized by vital energy, something about which we really know very little, but something which is absolutely indispensable to every living creature. T. C. Chamberlin, the dean of American geologists, closes his volume on the origin of the earth with the following sentence: "It is our personal view that what we conveniently regard as merely material is at the same time spiritual, that what we try to reduce to the mechanistic is at the same time volitical, but whether this be so or not, the emergence of what we call the living from the inorganic, and the emergence of what we call the psychic from the physiologic, were at once the transcendent and the transcendental features of the earth’s evolution." With this conclusion I am in hearty accord, I believe that life as we know it is but one manifestation of the mysterious spiritual powers which permeate the universe. The geologic factors assembled in the primitive earth provided an environment within which the spiritual could manifest itself in the material. The form which it should assume may have been largely determined by that environment; the primitive cell was the result. Thus, in truth, was man made from the dust of the ground.

Again, the record of the rocks tells nothing except by inference of the previous state of the mineral matter of which the earth is made. Several theories, varying from one another in greater or less detail, are now under consideration by geologists and astronomers in their attempt to understand the actual beginnings and the antecedents of the earth and its fellow planets in the solorsolar [sic] system. So far as we now know all the planets, suns and stars