In the disorder and confusion sometimes incident to growth and progress, the community may be unable to see anything but the unlovely struggle itself.
The writer recalls a conversation between two workingmen who were leaving a lecture on "Organic Evolution." The first was much puzzled, and anxiously inquired of the second "if evolution could mean that one animal turned into another." The challenged workman stopped in the rear of the hall, put his foot upon a chair, and expounded what he thought evolution did mean; and this, so nearly as the conversation can be recalled, is what he said: "You see a lot of fishes are living in a stream, which overflows in the spring and strands some of them upon the bank.

The weak ones die up there, but others make a big effort to get back into the water.

They dig their fins into the sand, breathe as much air as they can with their gills, and have a terrible time.

But after a while their fins turn into legs and their gills into lungs, and they have become frogs.

Of course they are further along than the sleek, comfortable fishes who sail up and down the stream waving their tails and despising the poor damaged things thrashing around on the bank.
He--the lecturer--did not say anything about men, but it is easy enough to think of us poor devils on the dry bank, struggling without enough to live on, while the comfortable fellows sail along in the water with all they want and despise us because we thrash about." His listener did not reply, and was evidently dissatisfied both with the explanation and the application.