452 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1909. 
parasites and sedentary animals), but on the whole the direction of 
evolution has been an ascending one. 
I see no ground for assuming that this will be otherwise in the 
future. According to the principle of selection the best will survive 
in the future as in the past, and mankind will ascend. I do not 
believe we are likely to undergo any essential changes in a crude 
physical sense; we are not likely to grow wings, and even our mental 
powers may not be capable of much further improvement, but ethical 
improvement seems to me not only possible but probable, on the 
principle of selection. Mankind will never consist of wholly selfless 
saints, but the number of those who act in accordance with the ideals 
of a purer, higher humanity, in whom the care for others and for 
the whole will limit care for self, will, it is my belief, increase with 
time, and lead to higher religions, higher ethical conceptions, as it 
has already done within the period of human existence known to us. 
But here again I can only indicate without following out my ideas. 
_I wished to express them, because the principle of selection has so 
often been applied in an inverted sense, as if the brutal and animal 
must ultimately gain the ascendency in man. The contrary seems 
to me to be true, for it is the mind, not the body, that is decisive in 
the selection of the human race. 
Thus we see the principle of evolution intervening, transforming, 
re-creating in every department of human life, and thought, and 
endeavor. Weowe this principle, which has been so fruitful in results, 
mainly to Charles Darwin, though he was not the only one nor the 
first to think it out. But it was he, with Wallace, who secured it its 
place in science and made it a common possession of mankind by 
working it out in all directions, and supporting it with another prin- 
ciple, that of selection, which explains the riddle of the automatic 
origin of what is suited to its purpose in nature. Thus he cleared 
away the obstacle which would otherwise have stood in the way of 
the acceptance of the theory of evolution. 
By all this he has earned enduring fame in the annals of science. 
His own country has not been ungrateful to him. A colossal statue 
of him in marble decorates the British Museum; from the background 
of the entrance hall he looks down on the passers-by with the calmness 
of the sage. His mortal remains lhe in Westminster Abbey beside 
those of Newton. 
Fate, too, was kind to him. He could truly say that his life was a 
happy one, for it was filled with a great idea, and he was Supported 
by the consciousness that Goethe expresses through his Faust: “ Es 
kann die Spur von meinen Erdentagen nicht in Aeonen untergehen.” 
This is true of Darwin, and we may think of him as one of the great 
immortals among men. 
