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.
Flashing through the void at, let us say, a million miles a
second, he would (if we can overlook the dispersion of the rays
of light) overtake in succession the light that fell on the
French Revolution, the Reformation, the Norman Conquest, and the
faces of the ancient empires. He would read, in reverse order,
the living history of man and whatever lay before the coming of
man. Few thought, as they smiled over this fairy tale of science,
that
some such panoramic survey of the story of the earth, and even of
the heavens, might one day be made in a leisure hour by ordinary
mortals; that in the soil on which they trod were surer records
of the past than in its doubtful literary remains, and in the
deeper rocks were records that dimly lit a vast abyss of time of
which they never dreamed. It is the supreme achievement of modern
science to have discovered and deciphered these records. The
picture of the past which they afford is, on the whole, an
outline sketch. Here and there the details, the colour, the light
and shade, may be added; but the greater part of the canvas is
left to the more skilful hand of a future generation, and even
the broad lines are at times uncertain. Yet each age would know
how far its scientific men have advanced in constructing that
picture of the growth of the heavens and the earth, and the aim
of the present volume is to give, in clear and plain language, as
full an account of the story as the present condition of our
knowledge and the limits of the volume will allow. The author has
been for many years interested in the evolution of things, or the
way in which suns and atoms, fishes and flowers, hills and
elephants, even man and his institutions, came to be what they
are. Lecturing and writing on one or other phase of the subject
have, moreover, taught him a language which the inexpert seem to
understand, although he is not content merely to give a
superficial description of the past inhabitants of the earth.
The particular features which, it is hoped, may give the book a
distinctive place in the large literature of evolution are,
first, that it includes the many evolutionary discoveries of the
last few years, gathers its material from the score of sciences
which confine themselves to separate aspects of the universe, and
blends all these facts and discoveries in a more or less
continuous chronicle of the life of the heavens and the earth.
Then the author has endeavoured to show, not merely how, but why,
scene succeeds scene in the chronicle of the earth, and life
slowly climbs from level to level. He has taken nature in the
past as we find it to-day: an interconnected whole, in which the
changes of land and sea, of heat and cold, of swamp and hill, are
faithfully reflected in the forms of its living population. And,
finally, he has written for those who are not students of
science, or whose knowledge may be confined to one branch of
science, and used a plain speech which assumes no previous
knowledge on the reader's part.
For the rest, it will be found that no strained effort is made to
trace pedigrees of animals and plants when the material is
scanty; that, if on account of some especial interest disputable
or conjectural speculations are admitted, they are frankly
described as such; and that the more important differences of
opinion which actually divide astronomers, geologists,
biologists, and anthropologists are carefully taken into account
and briefly explained. A few English and American works are
recommended for the convenience of those who would study
particular chapters more closely, but it has seemed useless, in
such a work, to give a bibliography of the hundreds of English,
American, French, German, and Italian works which have been
consulted.
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