230 MARRIAGE AND HEREDITY 



But we can at length perceive something of its general 

 pattern; nay, to adopt the vigorous simile of Pro- 

 fessor Tyndall, we can even catch glimpses of the 

 flying shuttle. The decay of the peoples and civili- 

 sations of the past was due to causes which we are 

 now beginning to understand, and our growing know- 

 ledge upon that point, together with the remedies it 

 may enable us to adopt, is in itself to be regarded, 

 perhaps, as a feature of evolution. 



Speculation is still free to deal as it pleases with 

 those wider questions. What are we ? and Whither 

 do we tend ? " Here we drift," says Emerson, " like 

 white sail across the wild ocean, now bright on the 

 wave, now darkling in the trough of the sea ; but from 

 what port did we sail ? Who knows ? Or to what 

 port are we bound ? Who knows ? There is no one 

 to tell us but such poor weather-tossed mariners as 

 ourselves whom we speak as we pass, or who have 

 hoisted some signal or floated to us some letter in a 

 bottle from afar. But what know they more than 

 we ? They also found themselves on this wondrous 

 sea. No ; from the older sailors nothing. Over all 

 their speaking trumpets the gray sea and the loud 

 winds answer — Not in us ; not in Time." At the 

 risk of spoiling this beautiful figure we would add, 



