io8 At the Darkest Hour. 



A. D. ? Yet the greater era of the Anglo-Saxon has suc- 

 ceeded, in due time. 



In the large, mankind has developed by rhythmic ad- 

 vances and pauses. Collapse has followed each upward 

 career; but always something grander succeeds. Ten 

 thousand years is the briefest time period by which the 

 progress and probabilities of the genus homo can be cor- 

 rectly measured. Ten thousand years, indeed, is but a 

 yesterday in life's great curriculum on this planet. 



Regarded in this larger light, and from the standpoint 

 of progress in the physical sciences, art, and invention, 

 humanity is at its brightest hour. 



Grand, hopeful, and benign as is this progress, so pro- 

 phetic of a mighty future for humanity, it is none the less 

 tinged with an ever-deepening sadness for each and all of 

 us, personally. A magnificent future is dawning, but we 

 shall not see it. A few months, a few years more at most, 

 and personally we must close our eyes in death, and drop 

 back into the insentient void. In truth, it is this very 

 awakening of the intellect, this latter-day vision of the 

 future, which renders death so grievous, so inopportune. 



It was not so with our ancestors. Life was a struggle 

 too hard, too grim, to be greatly prized per se ; the ills 

 of life were numerous ; they suffered from heat, cold, 

 famine and the malignity of foes. The pleasures of life, 

 too, were chiefly sensory and fleeting ; hence their mental 



