424 Life and Immortality. 



little less so. Thus, then, do both science and theory point 

 to the same conclusion. That which poets hardly dared to 

 hope for, the future happiness of our race, science boldly 

 predicts. Even in our own time we trust to see some 

 wonderful improvement. But the unselfish mind, however, 

 will find its highest gratification in the belief that, whatever may 

 be the case with ourselves, our descendants will understand 

 many things which are mysterious to us now, will better 

 appreciate the beautiful world in which we live, avoid much 

 of the suffering to which we are subject, enjoy many blessings 

 of which we are not yet worthy, and escape many of those 

 temptations which we deplore but cannot wholly resist. 



We have thus seen that all life has been progressive. 

 There has been through the ages a steadily growing upward 

 tendency to higher life. But the changes have mainly 

 been in the line of physical form and structure. And 

 such, too, had been the case with man, until his social, 

 intellectual and moral faculties had begun to assert them- 

 selves, when his body ceased in a great measure to be 

 acted upon by physical laws, and development began to- 

 manifest itself in a higher type of mental organization. 

 From the low, simple, childlike mind of palaeolithic man 

 has come that wonderful intellect which now characterizes 

 the Germanic races, and which is destined to make itself 

 felt in its contact with all the earth. Those peoples that are 

 able to embrace the new civilization brought to their doors, 

 so to speak, will survive, while the others, unable to adapt 

 themselves thereto, like the Tasmanian, will succumb in the 

 struggle with a superior being and go to the wall. Animals 

 and plants will be brought into new relations and new 

 conditions, and such as can meet the new requirements will, 

 as certain species have done before, endure. They will, in 

 other words, have partaken of an enlightened civilization. 

 Thus things will go on until all life, vegetal and animal, 

 will be brought under the controlling and elevating influ- 

 ence of man, and then will be inaugurated on earth that 



