320 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



out we ought to learn from this that our higher aspirations should 

 bid us brave death itself if, by a voluntary martyrdom only, we 

 can so hasten on the triumph of " the good, the beautiful, and the 

 true." 



But this transformed princess, as also the Sleeping Beauty, 

 Biquet with the Tuft, and Beauty and the Beast, all may alike 

 serve to image forth an aspect of the Cosmos which is particularly 

 interesting to us to-day. They all indicate, by some astonishing 

 transformation, how every one and everything is affected through 

 new conditions of environment, how change pervades the universe, 

 and how all of us must undergo a process of evolution, though 

 not, by any means, one in the entirely beneficent direction, nor 

 with the rapidity these fairy tales indicate. But rapidity is 

 essentially a relative term ; and so the swift sword-stroke of the 

 one prince or the awakening kiss of the other can quite well sym- 

 bolize the slow, as well as rapid, processes of the natural world. 



That universal and unceasing process of change which goes on 

 throughout the Cosmos must affect the mind as well as the body 

 of every one of us. Nor could a reasonable man wish that it were 

 altogether otherwise with him, since " to cease to change is to 

 cease to live." But we naturally shrink from decay, and should 

 do so from mental degradation, while evolution (as above said, 

 and as every one knows) is not universally or necessarily benefi- 

 cent. Among the many evils around us (the existence of which 

 none but an irrational optimist will deny) are the results of 

 evolution in certain minds minds which, in the battle of life, 

 have become more and more morally degraded and intellectually 

 darkened, and so continue till the end. 



We might, in truth, put forward as an argument in favor of 

 a brute element in our being, the fact that increasing years so 

 often fail, in men as in monkeys, to produce any visible increase 

 of " sweetness and light." On the other hand, we are most of us 

 fortunate enough to know men in whom long life has served to 

 ripen the most precious mental fruits. 



It is the process of evolution in the mind which should above 

 all things interest us. The great cosmic process considered as 

 evolving suns and planets and bringing forth vegetal and sentient 

 life is of course a wonderful and admirable process. Yet it is 

 nothing to the formation of a single self-conscious being. So far 

 as our knowledge extends, it is true that 



" In Nature there is nothing great but man : 

 In man there is nothing great but mind." 



Phases in the development of one human intelligence must there- 

 fore form a really nobler object of study than that of myriads of 

 stellar orbs devoid of intellect. 



