no THE PORTAL OF EVOLUTION 



ment who have thereby restored the lost vital powers to the 

 degenerate races they conquered, and by so doing have added 

 to the physical powers of the conquering nations the mental 

 advantages of past civilisation, the memories of which the loss 

 of soul had made dormant in the conquered race. For, say 

 what you like to the contrary, energy is the life of the soul, 

 and we cannot too strongly impress on future generations, 

 yet to be born, that work and plenty of it not the eight-hour 

 day and " government-stroke " is the only thing that can 

 enable them to gain heaven and prolong their lives, and that 

 all other virtues are of no avail without it. 



As the first stage of the evolution of life is a long struggle 

 of physical existence to conquer matter so as to produce energy 

 sufficient to utilize knowledge, so the future stages of involu- 

 tion now about to commence will be a like struggle of the mind 

 and soul to conquer selfishness, war, crime and cruelty by love 

 and charity and thus to acquire a perfect soul, so that man may 

 learn to use in the best manner possible the knowledge evolu- 

 tion has enabled him to acquire ; in love, peace and comfort. 



Now I will give a further illustration of heredity. The 

 mind of the agriculturist is a mind of comprehension. This 

 makes him more capable of observation than to weigh or reason 

 cause and effect. It also makes him adverse to theory and 

 wedded to practice and experiment. It is also the mind of a 

 soldier and statesman, but it is not the mind of the scientist, 

 business man, lawyer or mechanic, artist or author. Hence as 

 agriculture is a science less of knowledge than of observation, 

 to be a really successful farmer the two following qualifications 

 are the ones most essential experience in observation, and a 

 past ancestry of men who have devoted their lives to a close 

 observation of nature rather than to a close study of detail and 

 science. This is why the farmer is always reluctant to accept 

 the advanced ideas of science until full experiment and obser- 

 vation have proved them correct. It will therefore be found 

 that if twelve youths are selected from families that are bred 

 from town or professional families and are sent to an agricul- 

 tural college, the chances are that only two or three will be 

 successes as farmers, and that nine or ten of the children of 

 families that have had an unbroken line of agricultural ances- 

 tors will, with less knowledge, outstrip them in practical 

 efficiency. And it is highly probable that if the ancestry of 



