164 THE CREED OF SCIENCE, RELIGIOUS AND MORAL. 



with all that ever flourished upon it, including the 

 human soul. 



The earth herself shall perish ; her energies exhausted, 

 like those of the moon, her motion in space constantly 

 impeded, and her orbit narrowed, she will finally become 

 precipitated upon the parent sun. But long before that 

 distant catastrophe, our species shall have vanished from 

 off the earth. For Science shows us that man, though 

 the most remarkable and brilliant phenomenon that has 

 appeared, was only a comparatively late arrival on the 

 stage of our planet, and she further clearly hints that he 

 may have to depart comparatively soon. The records 

 of geology show us the general law, that all species have 

 their term of being. They appear, and after a period 

 disappear. They have, as individuals, their exits and 

 their entrances and their several stages. Man, too, will 

 disappear, as other species have done. We can even 

 foresee the possible causes which may lead to this result. 

 His fuel, his food, his heart, or his virtue may fail him. 

 His fuel may fail from exhaustion ; his food from blight, 

 from innumerable noxious insects, defying his means of 

 destruction, from sterility in the earth induced by ex^ 

 haustion, from the competition of lower animals ; worse 

 than all, his own heart may fail if the creed of the pessi- 

 mist prevails. With all these is he threatened, and 

 one would be sufficient to cause his extinction. But 

 however it happen, and however long the end be delayed, 

 the belief of science is that, as our species is not coeternal 

 with the earth, as it came one day on the stage, so it 

 will one day vanish. And the day may not be so remote, 

 as our poet makes Lucretius say 



That hour perhaps 

 Is not so far when momentary man 

 Shall seem no more a something to himself; 



