SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION. Life appears to have been a necessary and inevitable result of inorganic or cosmic evolution. It came into be ing on our planet in the most natural way as soon as the temperature of the originally super heated planetary mass became sufficiently low ered, and the gaseous matter had been condensed into a universal sea. It arose by the action of physico-chemieal laws, through what we call spontaneous generation, the materials for the for mation of the first bit of living protoplasm being ready at band. When once formed, motion, change. and the action of the primary factors, ex erted through a great length of time, resulted in the differentiation or divergence of characters, and specialization went on, conditioned by and dependent on the increasing changes in the in ternal structure and physical geography of the globe.
Variation was most probably neither fortuitous nor by chance, but was due to changes in the environment, and therefore was necessarily in di rect relation with such changes, resulting in the wonderful adaptation, variety, beauty, and har mony reigning through the organic world.
Putting together all the facts of geology and biology observed during the past century, a few of the more observant and thoughtful naturalists have, by the inductive method, to some extent worked out the ineehanism of evolution. The theory is .a good working (me, indispensable in research. Still, we know only in part theguid ing. controlling cause. There seems to be some thing more than the action of the physical fac tors and natural selection, which we cannot fathom. There has evidently been all through the process a modifying power, the nature of which science has not yet grasped. The striking fact in the whole course of evolution is that progress has been along certain useful and beneficent. lines; that. the inadapted,
degenerate, useless, however useful at first, have had to make way for higher forms better adapted to continually changing and improving condi tions. Intelligence, mind, order, harmony, sys tem, and good, rather than had conditions, have resulted from and operated since the original chaos when physical force, energy, alone pre vailed. There is a constant tendency seen in the evolution of the more favored human races toward improvement intellectual, moral, and spiritual. Epoch-making men, the highest repre sentatives of our race, have shaped the age in which they lived, and in various directions given this and that impetus to the upward progres. There has been a directive force through it all, which has controlled and led life-forms along definite paths.
Natural selection alone, or the action of the primary factors, cannot entirely account for it. The universe, our world, life, and nature, were not self-evolved. It seems to be a reasonable induction that a self-conscious power and will outside of, and yet immanent in, matter, gave the first impress to the nascent universe, what we call natural laws being the mode of working, and in some unknown way providing the germs of self-progress along improving lines.
The evolution theory and its implications, therefore, immeasurably enhance our conception of Deity, and suggest most strongly that there is a divinity which has shaped our ends. The outcome of the whole is optimism, hope, giving the certitude that man's future will brighten, and that as the ages roll on life will be far more worth living than even now.