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92
SÖNYA KOVALÉVSKY
they have been developed from those which preceded
them, he cannot say.
The petrified specimens of fully developed types
are everywhere found in abundance; all museums are
stuffed full of them, but the paleontologist is
blissfully happy if he accidentally succeeds in digging up
anywhere a skull, a few teeth, a bit of detached bone,
of some transitional type, by which he is enabled to
reconstruct in his scientific imagination the road by
which the development proceeded. One might
suppose that nature herself zealously erases and
eradicates all traces of her work. She seems proud of
perfect specimens of her handiwork, in which she
has succeeded in incarnating some fully developed
thought, but she pitilessly annihilates the very
memory of her first, uncertain efforts.
The inhabitants of Palibino lived on peacefully and
quietly; they grew up and waxed old; they quarreled
and became reconciled to each other; by way of
passing the time they bickered about this or that magazine
article, about this or that scientific discovery, being
all the while thoroughly convinced, nevertheless, that
all these questions pertained to another world, wholly
distinct from theirs, and that they would never have
any direct contact with every-day life. And all of a
sudden, no one could say how, signs were revealed
close beside them of some strange fermentation, which
was indisputably drawing nearer and nearer, and
threatened to culminate directly in a line with their
quiet, patriarchal existence. And the danger
threatened not from one quarter only; it seemed to come
from all points at once.
It may be said that, in the period of time included
between the years 1860 and 1870, all the educated
classes of Russian society were occupied exclusively
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