THE WORM STRIVING TO BE MAN 



time that he is squandering his inheritance and will 

 mend his ways. He will conserve in the future as he 

 has wasted in the past. He will learn to conserve 

 his own health. He will banish disease; he will 

 stamp out all the plagues and scourges, through his 

 scientific knowledge; he will double or treble the 

 length of life. Man has undoubtedly passed through 

 and finished certain phases of his emotional and 

 mental development. He will never again be the 

 religious enthusiast and fanatic he has been in the 

 past; he has not worshiped his last, but he has 

 worshiped his best. He will build no more cathe- 

 drals; he will burn no more martyrs at the stake. 

 His religion as such is on the wane. But his humani- 

 tarianism is a rising tide. He is becoming less and 

 less a savage, revolts more and more at the sight of 

 blood and suffering. The highly religious ages were 

 ages of blood and persecution. Man's tenderness for 

 man has vastly increased. The sense of the sacred- 

 ness of human life has increased as his faith in his 

 gods has declined. He has grown more human as he 

 has grown less superstitious. Science has atrophied 

 his faith, but it has softened his heart. His fear of 

 Nature has given place to love. Man never loved as 

 he does now. He has withdrawn his gaze from hea- 

 ven and fixed it upon the earth. As his interest in 

 other worlds has diminished, his interest in this has 

 increased. As the angels have departed, the child- 

 ren have come in. 



195 



