THE FUTURE. 601 



which in animals affects the body and seems to have little 

 influence on the mind, in man affects the mind and has little 

 influence on the body. In the first, it tends mainly to the 

 preservation of life ; in the second, to the improvement of the 

 mind, and consequently to the increase of happiness. It 

 ensures, in the words of Mr. Herbert Spencer, a a constant 

 progress towards a higher degree of skill, intelligence, and 

 self-regulation a better co-ordination of actions a more 

 complete life."* Even those, however, who are dissatisfied 

 with the reasoning of Mr. Darwin, and believe that neither 

 our mental nor our material organization is susceptible of any 

 considerable change, may still look forward to the future with 

 hope. The tendency of recent improvements and discoveries 

 is less to effect any rapid change in man himself, than to 

 bring him into harmony with nature ; less to confer upon him 

 new powers, than to teach him how to apply the old. 



It will, I think, be admitted that of the evils under which 

 we suffer, nearly all may be attributed either to ignorance or 

 sin. That ignorance will be diminished by the progress of 

 science is of course self-evident; that the same will be the 

 case with sin, seems little less so. Thus, then, both theory 

 and experience point to the same conclusion. The future 

 happiness of our race, which poets hardly ventured to hope 

 for, science boldly predicts. Utopia, which we have long 

 looked upon as synonymous with an evident impossibility, 

 which we have ungratefully regarded as " too good to be true," 

 turns out, on the contrary, to be the necessary consequence of 

 natural laws, and once more we find that the simple truth 

 exceeds the most brilliant flights of the imagination. 



Even in our own time we may hope to see some improve- 

 ment : but the unselfish mind will find its highest eratifica- 



' O O 



* Herbert Spencer, A Theory of Population deduced from the General 

 Law of Animal Fertility, p. 34. 



