CONTEMPORARY OPINION.

Bush Advocate, Volume XXI, Issue 94, 19 October 1908, Page 7

CONTEMPORARY OPINION.

MAN'S PLACE IN NATURE

(By Edgar Lucien. Larkin.)

Man lives on a spheroidal wcvrld

having a mean diameter of 7f)j y miles. This gives a surface u^.j which to live of 197,360,650 squ^j miles, but far more than half is <:.■: cupied by water. The earth is 5.66 tiznes denser than water, and its ..mass is six and two-thirds sextilion, tons. But this compared with the mass of that part of the universe .already weighed is expressed by a naught, or zero; it is so exceedingly small. This is not strictly exact — the true definition of the earth's mas is next to nothing; but in solving an equation they put in an 0 for the earth, when mass of the sidereal stracture is concerned. Man is kept alive solely by the heat, light and electricity of the sun. Just now the quantities of these received are just enough to keep him living. But man is in-- a more precarious condition than Tvas the hoj from whose head one William Tell was making ready to shoot the apple. Let the output of the sun increase or decrease- very much, then the human and all other species would soon be wiped out. Other suns are seen to make sudden changes, and ours may, for .all, that astronomers know.

Our little star, the sun, our heating stove, is 92,882,000 miles away ; and it is 1,310,000 miles larger than the earth. It moves through incredible solitudes of space,, with a speed of thirteen miles per second, and pulls along the earth, all the other planets, moons, comets, meteoric streams, in exact time, and none lags behind. The sun aud its majestic retinue of worlds have never been where they are now before, and never will be again. The earth, and all living things upon it, and every other inhabited world similar to it — if there are any — no matter how many there are, could all come to an end and never be missed. The actual billions of suns would still move on as though nothing had happened. Thus, our sun is a little star, and the earth almost nothing in comparison with the stellar structure.

MAN'S PLACE AMONG ANIMALS

His hody is made of exactly tile same chemical- substances found in animals, in the same proportions. And so is his brain made of the same materials as the brains of all animals having any. Yet the mystery of life has not yet beeii discovered ; although our great bio-chemists seem to be on the verge — but they may be exceedingly far from this capital discovery, if ever made. Man in zoology is a primate mammal, a special family. I have no intention of wandering far and away into the labyrinths of the evolution of man, but will state that lie is an exceedingly near, relation of the highest apes. For: "Man. properly so-called— endowed with speech — was evolved from the nonspeaking ape-man, or pithecanthropus/' — Ithuriel. The reader must not be misled by this statement. Man is the highest vertrebrate — that is a being with a spiual column — that has appeared on earth. But animals having backbones succeeded or were developed from those without. .In immense deeps of geological time, ascidians were the immediate precursors of animals with spinal bones. Then came the first vertebrate — the amphioxus: "The venerable ancestor of the vertebrates." For even between. the grand "vertebrate" and invertebrate divisions there flits a ghost -like form — the amphioxus." Man. is the latest result proceeding down, or up, from this first creature having a backbone. That is, the amphioxus had to exist first. Now, during all intervening millions of years one animal did not "turn into another," but higher and higher types kept on succeeding and appearing. Horizontal vertebrates developed into mammals, and after the lapse of ages, a mammal became perpendicular, roughly, as an ape. And a little later came man — the straight, upright, perpendicular being so far, and highest type of mammal. But man is not descended from apes but both from the same primordial ancestor, the lowly amphioxus.

No cases are known of one animal evoluting into another; nor have their fossil remains been found. Beings almost like their immediate predecessors appeared in eons of the past, but not exact. Then they reproduced the new kind. Man physically is almost like the highest ape, but not qiiite. Blood, brain, rrvuscles, bones and structures are similar, but not precisely alike, although the same chemically. The ape, therefore, was not man, but his immediate precursor. A STUPENDOUS CHASM. A mighty space as wide zoologically as the" diameter of the galaxy, astronomically, exists between the mind of the highest ape and the highest mathematician, and between tho throat sounds of apes and the oratory of a Daniel Webster. Words and thought are so mighty that the imagination is submerged in their contemplation. They are the most powerful entities in existence. Animals, .centiiry after century, do not progress. - This is because they can-

not speak. But -words are thought crystallised and appear in the mind first, and by processes absolutely unknown. About 1870 A.D., a most remarkable event happened — men suddenly, almost, began to study mind. And the new study appeared in many parts of the world, as though an impulse actuated students widely separated. This movement has often been called a "psychic wave." Astonishing results have followed; a series of discoveries in mysterious regions of the mind, entirely beyond the power of any known physical science to explain. If it is, so far, impossible in the most refined chemical laboratories to find out what- life is," what shall be said of that standing mystery — mind? Chemists freely predict" that they make life appear in their laboratories — we shall see. But it now seems to be an auspicious time to say this: The mind is illimitable, has no boundaries, and is infinite. For modern high mathematicians revel in infinite realms. For years I have received treatises and books on brain and mind. These gave details in anatomy and biochemistry, striving to prove that mind is a product of electro-chemical reactions in the cells of the brain. But n-6-wj a new kind of literature is ! pouring in here; teaching exactly the opposite,, namely, that the brain is merely a ..tool used by the mind. And the rising argument will ring around the. world. Unheard of things are now occurring in several places on earth, notably in Paris, Vienna and Melbourne, that lead investigators into unknown realms. And these amazing phenomena are increasing. Man's place in Nature is on a world so insignificant in comparison with the' known quantity of matter that it is not mentioned in equations. He is merely a high type of animal in body. Birt it is now seen that he is -mind with properties beyond all conception, and with power able to storm J the very battlements of infinity.