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A Series of Lessons in Gnani Yoga828
So we readily see that it is but a step, and a short step at that, between
the land-traveling and climbing fishes and the lower forms of Reptiles. The
Frog shows us the process of evolution between the two families, its life
history reproducing the gradual evolution which may have required ages
to perfect in the case of the species. You will remember that the embryo
stages of all creatures reproduce the various stages of evolution through
which the species has passed—this is true in Man as well as in the Frog.
We need not tarry long in considering the Reptile family of living forms.
In its varieties of serpents, lizards, crocodiles, turtles, etc., we have studied
and observed its forms. We see the limbless snakes; the lizards with active
limbs; the huge, clumsy, slow crocodiles and alligators—the armor-bearing
turtles and tortoises—all belonging to the one great family of Reptiles, and
nearly all of them being degenerate descendants of the mighty Reptile
forms of the geological Age of Reptiles, in which flourished the mighty
forms of the giant reptiles—the monsters of land and water. Amidst the
dense vegetation of that prehistoric age, surrounded by the most favorable
conditions, these mighty creatures flourished and lived, their fossilized
skeleton forms evidencing to us how far their descendants have fallen,
owing to less favorable conditions, and the development of other life-forms
more in harmony with their changed environment.
Next comes the great family of Birds. The Birds ascended from the Reptiles.
This is the Eastern Teaching, and this is the teaching of Western Science It was
formerly taught in the text-books that the line of ascent was along the family
of winged reptiles which existed in the Age of Reptiles, in the early days of
the Earth. But the later writers on the subject, in the Western world, have
contradicted this. It is now taught that these ancient winged-reptiles were
featherless, and more closely resembled the Bat family than birds. (You will
remember that a Bat is neither a reptile nor a bird—it is a mammal, bringing
forth its young alive, and suckling them at its breast. The Bat is more like a
mouse, and its wings are simply membrane stretched between its fingers, its
feet, and its tail.)