File:Ridpath's history of the world; being an account of the ethnic origin, primitive estate, early migrations, social conditions and present promise of the principal families of men (1897) (14596914807).jpg

Identifier: ridpathshistoryo01ridp (find matches)
Title: Ridpath's history of the world; being an account of the ethnic origin, primitive estate, early migrations, social conditions and present promise of the principal families of men ..
Year: 1897 (1890s)
Authors: Ridpath, John Clark, 1840-1900
Subjects: World history Ethnology
Publisher: New York, Merrill & Baker
Contributing Library: Mugar Memorial Library, Boston University
Digitizing Sponsor: Boston University

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are so limitedthat animal life of all kinds must becorrespondingly sparse and barren.Certain regions of the globe becomemore and more bleak until vital phe-nomena first weaken, then sink to lowerlevels of development, and finally dis-appear. Besides this, nature, instead ofbeing a safe, is everywhere a dangerous,arena. While she invites life, she op-poses it and puts impediments in theway of its progress. Not infrequentlyshe is a destroyer. The world has itscataclysms and physical commotions inwhich not only multitudes of individualsbut whole races of living beings areswallowed up. Life stands always onthe perilous edge of hazard. The conditions not only of health butof disease are present in ,„,. _ r All living forms the world. Epidemics su- subject to dis- . , .. j ease and death. pervene at intervals and sweep away or decimate existing species. 222 GREAT RACES OE MANKIND. The havoc of disease is seen not onlywhere human kind has risen above theother orders of animated nature and
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civilized the world, but wherever life isfound. It were a great error to supposethat the plant world, in a state of na- ture, is free from the ravages of disease—still greater to imagine that the lowerorders of animated being are not visited by destructiveepidemics. Itmight well ap-pear to the cal-culating mind ofMalthus that dis-ease is one ofthe naturalweapons bywhich the su-perabundance oflife is beatenback into thedust. The generalfact called cli-mate, with thechanges which itinvolves, con-tributes largelyto the strugglefor life. It wouldappear that everyspecies of livingorganism is care-fully balanced inits climatic en-vironment. Allliving beings aresensitive, most ofthem highly sen-sitive, to the in-fluence of evenslight changesamong the cos-mic forces inw h ic h theyswing. When-ever the turn ofthe secular wheelbrings around an altered condition ofearth or sea or air, that alteration is thecatastrophe of many species of animals MANNER OF THE BEGINNING.—THE TRUE EVOLUTION. 22

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