228 MY DEVON YEAR 



Builder is also the Master- Destroyer ; but he never 

 casts down an organism, a race, or a creed until the 

 law of progress is fulfilled and a better creature waits 

 for life and for space to grow in. 



Hear Lucretius : " None of the things, therefore, 

 which seem to be lost is utterly lost, since Nature 

 replenishes one thing out of another, and does not 

 suffer anything to be begotten, before she has been 

 recruited by the death of some other." 



That pessimism should spring from a contemplation 

 of this system in Nature is only to be explained 

 by the existence of human vanity and religious 

 superstition. The lords of creation we have long 

 called ourselves, and it irks man to discover that 

 in the records of his Mother he is set down under 

 another name. He lacks that perfect trust in Time 

 which the earth-worshipper acknowledges ; he lacks 

 that faith in the destiny of his own heir which Nature 

 inspires. Yet that is the best working faith of all, for 

 I discover in it the vital principle of every faith that 

 has claimed, or does, or will claim consideration and 

 manifest supremacy. It is the only faith of the future. 

 Far from sorrow, I feel joy at this thought of the 

 march forward ; I trust in the unborn, not in the dead ; 

 and because the future is hidden from me, and I 

 know that I may not attain to it, what matter ? 

 Nature, at least, lifts me up that I may see with the 

 eyes of my intellect that glimmering dawn. 



She will labour here ceaselessly until the sun grows 

 cold ; and we are as much a part of her immemorial 



