THE DESCENT OF MAN 143 



the distant future.' Surely this is the truer and manlier 

 way of looking at the reversed and improved attitude 

 of man. Surely it is better to climb to the top than to 

 have been placed there and fallen at the very outset. 

 Surely it is a nobler view of life that we may yet by 

 our own strenuous exertions raise our race some places 

 higher in the endless and limitless hierarchy of nature 

 than that we are the miserable and hopelessly degene- 

 rate descendants of a ruined and degraded angelic 

 progenitor. Surely it is well, while we boast with 

 Glaucus that we indeed are far braver and better than 

 our ancestors, to pray at the same time, in the words of 

 Hector, that our sons may be yet braver and better than 

 ourselves. 



