

THE PHILOSOPHY OF EVOLUTION 25 



and expanding in the race at large ! Then let us cast our 

 eyes forward through the tens of hundreds of thousands of 

 years to come. Surely we can afford to exercise a little 

 patience, trusting that, if not for us or for our children, yet 

 for men, our late posterity, more insight will be granted and 

 their clarity of vision strengthened. This, then, is the promise 

 of faith extended to religious souls by Science. ' Ah ! but,' 

 it may be urged, ' that is making too large a demand upon 

 unselfishness ! Shall men seek nothing for themselves ? ' 

 I turn to Christians of the old school, and ask whether the 

 renouncement of self, the will to live for others, the desire 

 to glorify God, be not fundamental portions of their creed ? 

 These have always been preached as virtues. Now is the 

 time to apply them in pure earnest as principles of conduct. 

 Should it be objected that the promises which made these 

 virtues palatable are withdrawn, we must remember that we 

 are no longer children for whom the health-giving draught 

 has to be sweetened with honey. Virtue has always been said 

 to be its own reward, and to some extent this is true. At 

 any rate, Science, with far more cogency than any theological 

 system, proves that vice is its own punishment. There is, 

 moreover, some satisfaction surely in contributing to the 

 advance of humanity, from whom we derive everything, who 

 expects from us so much. Without being Positivists, we may 

 learn this lesson from the church of Auguste Comte. 1 



My argument has led me into a lay-sermon, more calcu- 

 lated to send people to sleep in some lecture-room than to 

 arrest their busy eyes as they turn the pages of this book. 

 It is time to quit the pulpit. But as I opened this part of 

 my discourse with a Stoic's prayer, I will close it with a 

 hymn by Goethe. The prayer sufficiently represents the 



1 While preparing this essay for the press, I came for the first time 

 (I am sorry to say) upon the admirable article of Professor Dowden on 

 ' The Scientific Movement in Literature.' (Studies in Literature, 4th 

 Edition, 1887.) Some of the conclusions to which he has been led corre- 

 spond to those I have been stating here, though he has not committed 

 himself to any mystical and pantheistic speculation. It is an essay 

 which ought to be read and studied attentively. 



