The Gifts of Science 131 



worlds, find the whole race instead swept on, part and 

 parcel of an endless flux, whose origin we know not, 

 whose issue must be good and good alone. Good is here, 

 and science knows no retrogression; only the further 

 perfection of that which has been approved. The great 

 contribution of science is the law of growth, more or less 

 obscured perhaps by the term evolution, but a fact never- 

 theless, which has found acceptance in every intellectual 

 workshop of the world. We discuss the growth of insti- 

 tutions, the growth of art, the growth of nations, the 

 growth of worlds; even the "Kingdom of Heaven" is 

 like unto "a grain of mustard seed," a living, growing 

 thing. The universe itself becomes an unfolding flower, 

 blooming by time 's eternal stream, and sunlit by a glory 

 of harmony and order and beauty. 



This new concept of things that are made has changed, 

 in fact, the outlook of the world, the possibilities of the 

 world as we see them, the very hope of the world. It will 

 serve to prevent, we trust, forever, that strange tendency 

 which has marked every preceding period in human his- 

 tory, a tendency to lapse, to become acquiescent, inert, 

 moribund. Philosophy, literature, religion, even our 

 own Christianity all tend to sink to one dead level of 

 mediocrity, and to stay there through a thousand years. 

 But a growing thing may not so cease. Not only has life 

 by no means reached perfection, it will reach perfection 

 never. Our modern conception of the world demands an 

 infinite future. And yet in the organic world, every 

 new characteristic as it appears has before it the possi- 

 bility of a perfection in its own direction; that is, per- 

 fect adaptation to all terrestrial conditions. Once the 



