EVOLUTION AND ETHICS. 191 



with a tenacious and powerful enemy as long as the world lasts. 

 But, on the other hand, I see no limit to the extent to which intel- 

 ligence and will, guided by sound principles of investigation, and 

 organized in common effort, may modify the conditions of exist- 

 ence, for a period longer than that now covered by history. And 

 much may be done to change the nature of man himself. The 

 intelligence which has converted the brother of the wolf into the 

 faithful guardian of the flock ought to be able to do something 

 toward curbing the instincts of savagery in civilized men. 



But if we may permit ourselves a larger hope of abatement of 

 the essential evil of the world than was possible to those who, in 

 the infancy of exact knowledge, faced the problem of existence 

 more than a score of centuries ago, I deem it an essential condi- 

 tion of the realization of that hope that we should cast aside the 

 notion that the escape from pain and sorrow is the proper object 

 of life. 



We have long since emerged from the heroic childhood of our 

 race, when good and evil could be met with the same " frolic wel- 

 come " ; the attempts to escajDe from evil, whether Indian or Greek, 

 have ended in flight from the battle-field ; it remains to us to 

 throw aside the youthful overconfidence and the no less youthful 

 discouragement of nonage. We are grown men, and must play 



the man 



" strong in will 

 To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield," 



cherishing the good that falls in our way and bearing the evil, in 

 and around us, with stout hearts set on diminishing it. So far, 

 we all may strive in one faith toward one hope : 



" It may be that the gulfs will wash us down, 

 It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles, 



"... but something ere the end, 

 Some work of noble note may yet be done.'' * 



"Teach, and let the examination take care of itself," was the advice given by 

 Mr. A. E. Hawkins, in his Notes on Science Teaching in the Public Schools, read 

 in the British Association. In his experience he had found that a little knowl- 

 edge went a long way in an examination. If necessary, the experiments of the 

 lecture could be performed by one of the boys, the rest watching him ; but it was 

 better that all the boys should make experiments, preferably working in pairs. 



* A great proportion of poetry is addressed by the young to the young ; only the great 

 masters of the art are capable of divining, or think it worth while to enter into, the feelings 

 of retrospective age. The two great poets whom we have so lately lost, Tennyson and 

 Browning, have done this, each in his own inimitable way ; the one in the Ulysses, from 

 which I have borrowed ; the other in that wonderful fragment, Childe Roland to the dark 

 Tower came. 



