50 INTRODUCTION 



his remedies ; its passions are stayed, its wrongs 

 redressed, its energies for good or evil directed by 

 his hand. For unnumbered millions he opens or 

 shuts the gates of happiness, and paves the way 

 for misery or social health. Never before was it 

 known and felt with the same solemn certainty 

 that Man, within bounds which none can pass, 

 must be his own maker and the maker of the 

 world. For the first time in history not in- 

 dividuals only but multitudes of the wisest and 

 the noblest in every land take home to them- 

 selves, and unceasingly concern themselves with, 

 the problem of the Evolution of Mankind. Multi- 

 tudes more, philanthropists, statesmen, missionaries, 

 humble men and patient women, devote them- 

 selves daily to its practical solution, and every- 

 where some, in a God-like culmination of Altruism, 

 give their very lives for their fellow-men. Who is 

 to help these Practical Evolutionists — for those who 

 read the book of Nature can call them by no other 

 name, and those who know its spirit can call them 

 by no higher — who is to help them in their tremen- 

 dous task ? There is the will — where is the wisdom ? 

 Where but in Nature herself. Nature may have 

 entrusted the further building to Mankind, but the 

 plan has never left her hands. The lines of the 

 future are to be learned from her past, and her 



