iv MODERN EVOLUTION 241 



as our life is but a temporary arrest of the universal 

 movement towards dissolution, so naught in our 

 actions can arrest the destiny of our kind. Huxley 

 thus puts it in the concluding sentences of his Pre- 

 face written in July 1894, one year before his 

 death to the reissue of Evolution and Ethics : 



' That man, as a " political animal," is susceptible 

 of a vast amount of improvement, by education, by 

 instruction, and by the application of his intelligence 

 to the adaptation of the conditions of life to his 

 higher needs, I entertain not the slightest doubt. 

 But, so long as he remains liable to error, intellectual 

 or moral ; so long as he is compelled to be perpetu- 

 ally on guard against the cosmic forces, whose ends 

 are not his ends, without and within himself; so 

 long as he is haunted by inexpugnable memories 

 and hopeless aspirations ; so long as the recognition 

 of his intellectual limitations forces him to acknow- 

 ledge his incapacity to penetrate the mystery of 

 existence ; the prospect of attaining untroubled 

 happiness, or of a state which can, even remotely, 

 deserve the title of perfection, appears to me to be 

 as misleading an illusion as ever was dangled before 

 the eyes of poor humanity. And there have been 

 many of them. That which lies before the human 

 race is a constant struggle to maintain and improve, 

 in opposition to the State of Nature, the State 

 of Art of an organised polity ; in which, and by 

 which, man may develop a worthy civilisation, 

 capable of maintaining and constantly improving 

 itself, until the evolution of our globe shall have 

 entered so far upon its downward course that the 

 cosmic process resumes its sway ; and, once more, 



Q 



