"But taking timely warning and leaving many things unsaid on this topic, let us not longer omit our homage to the efficient Nature, _natura naturans_, the quick cause before which all forms flee as the driven snows, itself secret, its works driven before it in flocks and multitudes (as the ancient represented Nature by Proteus, a shepherd), and in indescribable variety. It published itself in creatures reaching from particles and spicula through transformation on transformation to the highest symmetries, arriving at consummate results without a shock or a leap. A little heat, that is a little motion, is all that differences the bald dazzling white and deadly cold poles of the earth from the prolific tropical climates. All changes pass without violence by reason of the two cardinal conditions of boundless space and boundless time. Geology has initiated us into the secularity of Nature and taught us to disuse our school-dame measure and exchange our Mosaic and Ptolemaic scheme for her large style. We knew nothing rightly for want of perspective. Now we learn what patient ages must round themselves before the rock is broken and the first lichen race has disintegrated the thinnest external plate into soil and opened the door for the remote flora, fauna, Ceres and Pomona to come in. How far off yet is the trilobite, how far the quadruped, how inconceivably remote is man! All duly arrive, and then race after race of men. It is a long way from granite to the oyster; farther yet to Plato and the preaching of the immortality of the soul. Yet all must come, as surely as the first atom has two sides." It would be useless to multiply citations along this line to demonstrate not only that Emerson was an evolutionist, but that his whole philosophy was pervaded by the doctrine. It should be remembered that, at the time Emerson wrote, evolution had won wide favor among thinkers and that the success of the Origin of Species was an evidence, not of the creation of the evolution sentiment by that work, but of a pre-existing mental current in favor of evolution. Very respectfully, HARRIET C.B. ALEXANDER. CHICAGO, _December 20, 1898_. Editor's Table. _THE NEW SUPERSTITION._