i 4 4 THE PORTAL OF EVOLUTION 



with regard to how far they have injured or retarded the 

 scheme of the Almighty's creation, or injured the good of our 

 fellow-men. And in proportion as the acts we perform excel 

 in good or evil, so many of our children will be condemned 

 to decline or advance in the scale of development, or in other 

 words, will be rewarded by social advancement or punished 

 by social degradation. But as man is to have a free chance in 

 his redemption, we are each given two or three opportunities 

 in life to decide whether we are to be the lucky or the unlucky 

 members of our particular families and, in accordance with 

 the excellence of our virtues or the vileness of our crimes, the 

 question of the future chances granted to us and to our chil- 

 dren of the possibilities of rising or falling in the esteem of 

 others will be decided ; but should we, during life after life, 

 fail to endeavour to redeem the past, we will drop so far 

 behind in the progressive march of evolution that individual 

 after individual will be condemned to humiliation and the race 

 will become extinct, and the few who do not lag behind will 

 be absorbed in the stronger race. And so the survival of the 

 fittest will be accomplished in the future in mind and soul, as 

 it has in the past governed the survival of body and matter, 

 till all that is useless has been condemned to loss of life, and 

 so become damned for all eternity. For damnation can only 

 mean the loss of the power to re-create oneself and one's soul 

 in the bodies of one's children. 



