From this it appeared to me in youthful days that matter is millions of years older than Mind, for cosmic turbulence, tossings, seethings, boilings and unrest of matter in the forma tion of nebulas, meteors, comets, worlds, moons and suns, obtained for countless cycles, eons and ages before even one planet like the earth was hushed down into comparative stillness, quietude and very delicate neutralization or balance of opposing forces, geological, thermal, electrical and metero logical, in order that so excessively delicate an object as an amoeba, a microscopic bag of glue, a sack of gelatine filled with gelatinous water, might come into existence all of itself. For with one amoeba on earth, disporting in ancient or primeval thermal seas, the far later appearance of mammals, anthropoids and finally man was inevitable through slow processes of evolution. All was evolution up my way; books by dozens, teaching the doctrine, were read during the first half of my career. Not in a vale of tears, but on a ?at joy prairie in Illinois. Waving expanses of grass and fields of wheat, with square miles of corn made up my horizon east, south and west, in summer, and blowing snow in winter. One object broke the monotony of the horizon in the south east — a diminutive schoolhouse made of logs. But the north was a wide area of majestic trees, beneath which for miles there! Thrived a deep tangled wildwood; and lower still awilderness of ?owers. Within this lovely solitude, down by the creek, I pored over works on evolution. The lowing kine were there galore, while bucolic sights and sounds and evolu tions were mine.