204 MAMMALIAN DESCENT. [LECT. IX. 



conceives of the glory that is to be revealed in ami 

 to him. 



What must seem to him to be the very bitterness of 

 death is, in reality, the passage from the shadow of 

 death into a newness of life, as delightful as it must 

 have been unexpected. 



A word to the wise ! The great apostle of meta- 

 morphosis, our beloved Darwin, never doubted, and 

 never dreamed of doubting, the future possibilities of 

 our mysterious being, when he showed us that, in our 

 initiation into life, we were of the earth, earthy, and 

 like unto the beasts that perish. " Sit anima mea cum 

 philosophis !" May my soul always walk with his soul, 

 and with the souls of such calm, gentle, noble, and 

 expectant natures as his ! 



Anyhow, in the very delirium of life's fever we have 

 had visions of marvellous beauty ; beauty developed 

 upon this little, dark terrestrial ball. The possibilities 

 of the universe are practically infinite, and we can 

 afford to wait until the time of our " ecdysis " comes. 



But some one will say, should not all this speculation 

 and controversy about the evolution of organic types 

 with MAN at the top be avoided, as likely to fill us 

 with troubled dreams ? 



We cannot avoid it ; it is in the air. Once lift up 

 Man above the Tiger and the Ape, and he will begin to 

 speculate. I would not exchange Darwin's Origin of 

 Species for all that the " schoolmen " ever wrote ; and 



