More than ever before, I can't help but wonder what we are.  If we really aren't "special creations, but lineal descendants of some few beings which lived long before the first bed of the Cambrian system was deposited, how close are our ties to nature" (38).  For a semester, we have been discussing our unity with nature and the place that surrounds us.  If science is true, we truly are one with the natural world that surrounds us.  We all descended from "one common ancestor, a one-celled microbe that appeared some 4 billion years ago.  As ages passed, this tiny organism multiplied, differentiated and evolved into the enormous array of species that have since populated the earth" (40). 

            As students at the University of Texas, we are also one with the limestone buildings we inhabit.  We occupy the embodiment of remains of animals. 

            If this theory isn't true, how does that impact our connection with nature?  Do the concrete facts strengthen our connection or is an inner emotion or feeling that binds us to the world around us? 

            This reading also puts the notion of time in perspective.  While we can never completely grasp the concept of infinity, we can realize how short our time here is in comparison with the processes of evolution and natural selection for "we see nothing of these slow changes in progress, until the hand of time has marked the lapse of ages, and then so imperfect is our view into long-past geological ages, that we see only the forms of life are now different from what they formerly were" (37).  We do not have enough time here to complete everything that's possible to complete.  In previous decades, we've come to believe we're invincible.  We can divert nature, build enormous structures and destroy almost everything in our path.  We, however, don't have time to do everything, we need to realize