114 THE WHENCE AND THE WHITHER OF MAN 



birds of exceeding swiftness. This portion of our his- 

 tory covers the era of muscular activity. 



But these huge brutes are mostly doomed to extinc- 

 tion, and the bird fails of supremacy in the animal 

 kingdom. " The race is not to the swift, nor the battle 

 to the strong." All the time another system has been 

 slowly developing. The complicated nervous system 

 has required ages for its construction and arrangement. 

 Only in the highest mammals does the brain assert its 

 right to supremacy. But once established on its 

 throne the brain reigns supreme ; its right is chal- 

 lenged by no other organ. The possibilities of all the 

 other organs, as supreme rulers, have been exhausted. 

 Each one has been thoroughly tested, and its inade- 

 quacy proven beyond doubt by actual experiment. 

 These formerly supreme lower organs must serve the 

 higher. The age of man's existence on the globe is, 

 and must remain, the era of mind. For the mind 

 alone has an inexhaustible store of possibilities. 



The development of all these systems is simultane- 

 ous. From the very beginning all the functions have 

 been represented, all the systems have been gradually 

 advancing. Hydra has a nervous system just as really 

 as man. It has no brain, but it has the potentiality 

 and promise of one, and is taking the necessary steps 

 toward its attainment. But while the development of 

 all is simultaneous, their culmination and supremacy 

 is successive, first stomach and muscle, then brain and 

 mind. That was not first which is spiritual, but that 

 which is natural ; and afterward that which is spiritual. 

 But now that the mind lias once become supreme, 

 man must live and work chiefly for its higher develop- 

 ment. Thus alone is progress possible. 



