582 LIFE : OUTLINES OF GENERAL BIOLOGY 



readily may Dionysiac youth rush onward and into passion to its 

 utmost? In Greek Mythology we see the concentration of noble 

 passion to worthy effort and highest achievements in Hercules, 

 with his twelve labours; but for our matter-of-fact times, of the 

 self-supposedly more "practical man", such myths are done with 

 and forgotten. So our young Dionysos, left uninspired to Herculean 

 aims, remains too much left directionless; and so may fall, through 

 Bacchic joys, even to be a Silenus; or again to become seducer, 

 "fast man", and worse; while Ares may waste his manly strength 

 in brute force, as hooligan. 



Man's life may again abbreviate its phasal course: so an old 

 myth shows a brightly mercurial and Hermes-like youth, striking 

 and seizing fire from Nature, and bearing it even to Vulcan's forge, 

 as to Demeter's hearth. But Prometheus is left to poets, like poor 

 Shelley; save that we still seldom fail to inflict like penalties on 

 each fresh fire-bringer, whether of invention or of thought. 



The Greeks knew well the Cypress-tree, with its small beginnings 

 of leaves, perpetually young, and so growing on indefinitely — whence 

 indeed our graveyard Cypresses, though now misunderstood as 

 symbols of mourning instead of comfort. Thus their tales of the 

 immortal Zeus showed Eros often beside him; and whoever can 

 worthily prolong his years beyond the ordinary span has surely 

 something of this secret, at once so obviously psychic, yet so deeply 

 organic, of retaining childhood at its best throughout his thus long- 

 growing life. 



Are these Hellenic divinities then but casual mythologic dreams, 

 of mere literary interest, or at best of sculptural appeal ? So it has 

 too long seemed; yet if they did not exist, would not the biological 

 evolutionist, as he gained the courage of his opinions and the use 

 of his imagination, have now to invent them? 



By all means let researches continue into animal origins, and 

 through sub-human links to lower human species, like those of 

 which Piltdown, Neanderthal, etc., have yielded evidence; and 

 thence again to our own species and its existing varieties, races, and 

 mongrels. Vet is it not also time to be turning from this wellnigh 

 exclusive preoccupation with the remote past, seeking to form 

 some idea of man at his best, and thus of his possibilities in the 

 future? And when we find both already expressed in this truly 

 classic past, and beyond all our observant or evolutionary dream- 

 ings, do not such supreme presentments acquire fresh values and 

 renewed significance? 



How indeed can we explain our long-prevailing scientific apathy 

 to these concrete evidences of human evolution, and towards per- 

 fection so far beyond our customary inquiries and studies? Mainly 

 perhaps by the inevitable rebound from the would-be "classical 

 education", which starved our scientific interests, and yet was too 



