130 THE PORTAL OF EVOLUTION 



change of place, food and climate alter animals in a great 

 variety of ways ; for example, in form, shape, colour and 

 activity and strength. Hence were there not life and death, 

 age and youth, the world of knowledge and commerce, and 

 the enterprise of the past would never have come about ; 

 species would never have been evolved ; races would never 

 have intermingled ; new nationalities, empires and colonies 

 would never have come into existence. Also age is inclined 

 lo get into certain grooves out of which it refuses to travel 

 and becomes inoperative, and if death did not replace one 

 class of heredity by another variety of the same class, one 

 generation of a nation by different reproduction or variation 

 of the same nationality, knowledge and the world's pro- 

 gress would stand still at the inception of its existence and 

 never progress to its birth or conception. For one generation 

 stops when it has advanced matters to a certain point, then 

 the. next one takes up the evolution, and advances it a step 

 further for two or three generations then demands rest and re- 

 traces its steps. Thus youth causes progress on the one hand 

 and on the other old age makes for stability and productive- 

 ness, so in one part of the globe the young transmit civilisa- 

 tion to some other part where it flourishes anew, in many 

 cases to return and re-invigorate its parent stock to produce 

 a better race out of the intermingling of different nations 

 with different experiences. The larva of the snail, which is 

 one of the most sedentary of animals, is one of the most 

 energetic of grubs, and many very active animals pass their 

 youth in a torpid state. 



But as man is one in which the age of activity is youth, 

 I will confine myself to this phrase of activity. As 

 already stated, we do not play because we are young; but we 

 are young that we may play ; that is, that we may circulate 

 the survival of the fit amongst the unfit, and so tend to pro- 

 duce fresh varieties of existence till we arrive at.ja, perfect 

 production of body and brain. So until we had evolved per- 

 fect bodies we were subject to a great variety and a marvellous 

 multiplicity of evolutions of physical shape and variety so as 

 to create new productions of species. But now that we have 

 evolved a perfect body, such variations are but slight by com- 

 parison, but the near past and the near future are the ages 

 of mental variation, during which we have been passing from 



