216 NO STRUGGLE NO SELECTION 



I apprehend that the era of transition will prove 

 one of great and continued progress throughout the 

 civilised world, such as has been adumbrated in the 

 advance realised in the nineteenth century. I cleave 

 to the assurance that every nation that is now a 

 seat of civilisation shall be increasingly acted upon 

 by refining and humanising influences, and become more 

 enlightened and more equipped with powers that make 

 for progress won from the conquest of Nature by the 

 attainment of increased command over its forces. The 

 most brilliant seat of present-day civilisation can only 

 be considered as refined by a reference to its past 

 ruder state, and will at a later day appear rude and 

 unenlightened to a generation which contrasts it with 

 the moral and material status to which itself has 

 attained. 



Kejecting as impracticable, even as impossible, 

 and assuredly as undesirable, all ideas of human 

 perfectibility and of social equality, I believe that, 

 to adopt the language of the Greek poet, " God 

 is by the teaching of experience and suffering guiding 

 man in the paths of wisdom," and that the most 

 perplexing and complicated social problems of the 

 present day will by insensible advances and ameliora- 

 tions find their solutions in the coming years. The 

 elevation of mankind to the higher and purer social 

 life that is to be will not be the effect of human 

 foresight or of far-seeing legislative action, so much 

 as the result of humanity's blind, unconscious gropings 

 that have their drift and direction determined by that 



