The battle is beginning to become one of wits, and the crown will
soon pass from the strongest to the shrewdest. Mind, not muscle,
much less digestion or reproduction, is the goal of the animal
kingdom. And we shall see later that the mammalian mode of
reproduction and of care of the young led to an almost purely mental
and moral advance. For these could have but one logical outcome,
family life. And the family is the foundation of society. And family
and social life have been the school in which man has been compelled
to learn the moral lessons, the application of which has made him
what he is.
You must all, I think, have noticed that the different systems of
organs succeed one another in a certain definite order; and that
each stage from the lowest to the highest is characterized by the
predominance of a certain function or group of functions. This
sequence of functions is not a deduction but a fact. Place side by
side all possible genealogical trees of the animal kingdom, whether
founded on comparative anatomy, embryology, palaeontology, or all
combined. They will all disclose this sequence of functions arranged
in the same order. Let me call your attention to the fact that this
order is not due to chance, but rests upon a physiological basis. We
might almost claim that if the evolution of man from the single cell
be granted, no other order of their occurrence is possible.
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