vi SECRETS OF EARTH AND SEA 



Those who to-day despair of man's future limit their 

 outlook on the past to the conventional history of some 

 three or four thousand years. The only solid ground 

 upon which we can base the supposition that mankind 

 has moved from a less to a more complete attainment 

 of moral and physical well-being and will continue to 

 do so, exists in the ascertained facts of the past history 

 of living things on this Earth, and of man since his 

 earliest emergence from among the man-like apes made 

 known to us by his stone-implements and fossilized 

 bones. That there has been a development from lower, 

 simpler structure to higher, more complex, more efficient 

 structure is demonstrable, and so is the proposition that 

 there has been in the human race a continuous develop- 

 ment in the direction of increased adaptation to the 

 conditions of social life and an increased control by man 

 of those natural agencies which he can either favour when 

 conducive to his prosperity, or on the other hand can 

 arrest when inimical to it. " The continuous weakening of 

 selfishness and the continuous strengthening of sym- 

 pathy " (to adopt the words of the American philosopher, 

 Fiske) are, in spite of numerous lapses and outbursts of 

 savagery, patent features of the long history of mankind. 

 We have no reason to doubt their continuation, whilst 

 at the same time we must be prepared for and accept, 

 without desponding, the ups and the downs, the disasters 

 as well as the triumphs, which inevitably characterize the 

 natural process of evolution. One thing, above all others, 

 we as conscious, reasoning beings can do which must 

 tend to the further development and security of human 

 well-being : we can ascertain ever more and more of the 

 truth, or in other words, "that which is." We can discover 



