Behind
that horizon lay only the Cambrian, without vertebrates or any
other organism except a few shell-fish. On the further verge of
the Cambrian rose the crystalline rocks from which every trace of
organic existence had been erased.
That here, on the Wenlock Edge of time, a young American,
seeking only frivolous amusement, should find a legitimate
parentage as modern as though just caught in the Severn below,
astonished him as much as though he had found Darwin himself. In
the scale of evolution, one vertebrate was as good as another.
For anything he, or any one else, knew, nine hundred and ninety
nine parts of evolution out of a thousand lay behind or below the
Pteraspis . To an American in search of a father, it mattered
nothing whether the father breathed through lungs, or walked on
fins, or on feet. Evolution of mind was altogether another matter
and belonged to another science, but whether one traced descent
from the shark or the wolf was immaterial even in morals. This
matter had been discussed for ages without scientific result. La
Fontaine and other fabulists maintained that the wolf, even in
morals, stood higher than man; and in view of the late civil war,
Adams had doubts of his own on the facts of moral evolution:--
"Tout bien considere, je te soutiens en somme,
Que scelerat pour scelerat,
Il vaut mieux etre un loup qu'un homme.
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