THEORY OF EVOLUTION
“The first life that appeared on the earth was a one-celled animal or plant that appeared beneath the water. The germs of life travel through the ether, and wherever there are conditions in which living things can thrive, there they settle. So that was the way in which life began on the earth.
“This one-celled animal, after a while, divided into more cells, and thus became more complicated. When land appeared, land animals and plants came into existence. And these animals became higher and higher. First the animals without a spine, then a more complicated specimen, in the lower forms of vertebrates. Then the reptiles, out of which came two branches, the birds and the immense reptiles of which none have survived that I know of. But out of them came the mammals. And after many thousands of years, man appeared.
“At first man was more like an animal, but after centuries he became less savage. He made implements for himself, and lived in tribes with his fellow men; and the more highly civilized man becomes, the more will he sympathize with the rest of mankind, so that when the highest civilization arrives, it will only mean complete love of all living things.”
I insisted that the theory of germ transmission was not a fact. I said she seemed to have avoided natural selection, that I thought she did not like it because it was too mathematical and too logical for her. Ruth thought perhaps that was why she did not like it much, either, though it interested her. I said: “It seems at first so ‘cruel’ a theory; it repels us until we remember that what is cruel in a man is not so in a beast.” Virginia answered that she did not think it cruel, because it was not meant cruelly. “They had to kill each other,” she said. Henry asked me whether I thought it cruel to eat animals. I answered it was not cruel, unless they were cruelly killed. Ruth added that some time we would get beyond the need of eating animals. “To hunt for fun is wicked,” said Virginia.
Marian said: “Perhaps we think natural selection not so cruel among animals, because we did not do the suffering.”
The children all said they did not remember just what relation evolution had to our idea of life. I answered that the very fact that we could not go on in our thought without it proved its relation, and that we would constantly come back to it, that I did not need to explain it now.
Then we spoke of prayer. I asked each one in turn what and how much they had thought of it.
Alfred said he had never thought of it, that he had prayed as a baby, but had stopped early and never felt the need. Florence said the same. Henry said he believed in prayer, especially in prayer for strength in any undertaking. “Of course,” he went on, “I don’t expect to be helped against the other fellow, but I get strength in praying for strength.”
“I agree with you,” said Ruth, “only don’t you pray to know whether you are right or not? For you might be wrong.”