Belmont chronicle. [volume] (St. Clairsville, Ohio) 1855-1973, 1893-12-14
THE UNIVERSE.

i Other Worlds, Ours and Man From tho
Standpoint of Evolution.
Are there other worlds? The answer
must be yes. The deductions of science
demand it Enthusiastically. 1t may be diff
fcult or impossible to determine Just
what particular orbs are habitable or in
habited or to what plane their animated
structures may have advanced in the
creative scale, but as the universe eter-
nally was, since this succession of world
development and decadence has been in
eternal operation, the conclusion is ire
sistible that there never has been time
there was not an infnity of spheres in
habited. Are we then to conclude that
every orb in the skies is the abode of life?
Certainly not; nor can we conclude
that they are all habitable, for that mat
ter.
We must disabuse our minds of the
idea that the universe is solely run to
accommodate our little earth and its
fighting biped known as man-that the
universe is simply stage on which he
may sicken the gods with his bombastic
exploits.
Man, wherever he presents himself,
must be simply response to conditions
that invite him, and he is an amazingly
long time in responding. Nothing is
clearer in mathematics than is this fact
in anthropology. Long after the earth's
crust was cool, after ages of aqueous
and igneous warfare, when vegetation
was exuberant and huge animals dis
ported themselves in the great marshes
and lagoons, no man was present.
Volcanic Niagaras of molten matter
shot from the earth's interior, painting
in awful grandeur the nocturnal skies
with reflected confiagrations, the noun
tains commenced to wrinkle, and still
there was no man. The cooling contin-
ued, the crust thickened, cataclysms
ground the rock into drift; the terrors of
the convulsive storms grew wider and
wider apart, and still there was no hu-
manity to grace the scene. Huge and
uncouth life was that, savage and coarse;
hoarse cries of savagery, and night was
hideous with sanguinary uproar, but no
mammalia yet stood erect.
From some other world man may have
gazed at the earth through his glass and
speculate as we do when we gaze on
Mars, and thus, while hundreds of gen.
erations may have observed, they looked
on sphere where the elimination of
the creative process in human evolution
had not yet taken place.
But man finally came. He stood up,
but he was a picture. Behold yet his
congeneric brethren in Africa and parts
of Asia-suspicious heels, suspicious
handsl Jaw, face, eyes, brain, general
contour, all these were lessons, but ig-
norance, if not altogether bliss, had to
be eliminated, as slowly through the
ages did he journey up. His crude brain
developed with his ceaseless planning to
clrcumvent his lower congeners strug-
Cling for existence. Organ after organ
was developed, asnew impressions forced
themselves, until finally he began to
have vague idea of most rustic pro-
priety and dim conception of a crude
respectability.
Such, on the earth, has been mans
genesis. On other worlds his career
must be analogous to this. If, then, we
would know sught of man elsewhere we
must be able to trace his pedigree here.
Knowing the slow stages involved in
terrestrial development as regards the
evolutions of the spheres, we may know
approximately at least its animal de-
velopment.
But true knowledge, like true charity,
must begin at home. This world is the
key with which we must unlock the
problems of the stellar worlds.-Pitts-
burg Dispatch.