February 6, 1902] 



NATURE 



ness and wretchedness in the world of to-day. And although 

 we know that there is nothing final in that world State, although 

 we see it only as something to be reached and passed, although 

 we are sure there will be no such sitting down to restore and 

 perfect a culture as the positivists foretell, yet few people can 

 persuade themselves to see anything beyond that except in the 

 vaguest an^l more general terms. That world State of more effi- 

 cient, more vivid, beautiful and eventful people is, so to speak, 

 on the brow of the hill, and we cannot see over— though some of us 

 can imaginegreat uplands beyond and something, something that 

 glitters elusively, taking first one form and then another, through 

 the haze. We can see no detail, we can see nothing definable, 

 and it is simply, I know, the sanguine necessity of our minds 

 that makes us believe those uplands of the future are still more 

 gracious and splendid than we can either hope or imagine. But 

 of things that can be demonstrated we have none. 



Yet I suppose most of us entertain certain necessary per- 

 suasions, without which a moral life in this world is neither a 

 reasonable nor a possible thing. All this paper is built finally 

 upon certain negative beliefs that are incapable of scientific 

 establishment. Our lives and powers are limited, our scope in 

 space and time is limited, and it is not unreasonable that for 

 fundamental beliefs we must go outside the sphere of reason and 

 set our feet upon Faith. Implicit in all such speculations as 

 this, is a very definite and quite arbitrary belief, and that belief 

 is that neither humanity nor in truth any individual human being 

 is living its life in vain. And it is entirely by an act of faith that 

 we must rule out of our forecasts certain possibilities, certain 

 things that one may consider improbable and against the 

 chances, but that no one upon scientific grounds can call impos- 

 sible. One must admit that it is impossible to show why certain 

 things should not utterly destroy and end the entire human race 

 and story, why night should not presently come down and make 

 all our dreams and efforts vain. It is conceivable, for e.xample, 

 that some great unexpected mass of matter should presently 

 rush upon us out of space, whirl sun and planets aside like dead 

 leaves before the breeze, and collide with and utterly destroy 

 every spark of life upon this earth. So far as positive human 

 knowledge goes, this is a conceivably possible thing. There is 

 nothing in science to show why such a thing should not be. It 

 is conceivable, too, that some pestilence may presently appear, 

 some new disease, that will destroy, not lo or 15 or 20 per cent. 

 of the earth's inhabitants as pestilences have done in the past, 

 but 100 per cent., and so end our race. No one, speaking from 

 scientific grounds alone, can say — that cannot be. And no one can 

 dispute that some great disease of the atmosphere, some trailing 

 cometary poison, some great emanation of vapour from the 

 interior of the earth, such as Mr. Shiel has made a brilliant use 

 of in his " Purple Cloud," is consistent with every demonstrated 

 fact in the world. There may arise new animals to prey upon 

 us by land and sea, and there may come some drug or a wrecking 

 madness into the minds of men. And finally there is the 

 reasonable certainty that this sun of ours must some day radiate 

 itself towards extinction ; that at least must happen, it will 

 grow cooler and cooler, and its planets will rotate ever more 

 sluggishly until some day this earth of ours, lideless and slow 

 moving, will be dead and frozen, and all that has lived upon it 

 will be frozen out and done with. There surely man must end. 

 That of all such nightmares is the most insistently convincing. 

 And yet one doesn't believe it. 



At least I do not. And I do not believe in these things 

 because I have come to believe in certain other things, — in the 

 coherency and purpose in the world and in the greatness of 

 human destiny. Worlds may freeze and suns may perish, but 

 there stirs something within us now that can never die again. 



Do not misunderstand me when I speak of the greatness of 

 human destiny. 



If I may speak quite openly to you, I will confess that, con- 

 sidered as a final product, I do not think very much of myself 

 or (saving your presence) my fellow creatures. I do not think I 

 could possibly join in the worshi[i of humanity with any gravity 

 or sincerity. Think of it. Think of the positive facts. There 

 are surely moods for all of us when one can feel Swift's amaze- 

 ment that such a being should deal in pride. There are moods 

 when one can join in the laughter of Democrltus ; and they 

 would come oftener were not the spectacle of humun littleness 

 so abundantly shot with pain. But it is not only with pain that 

 the world is shot — it is shot with promise. Small as our vanity 

 and carnality makes us, there has been a day of still smaller 

 things. It is the long ascent of the past that gives the lie to our 



NO. 1684, VOL. 65] 



despair. We know now that all the blood and passion of our 

 life was represented in the Carboniferous time by something — 

 something, perhaps, cold-blooded and with a clammy skin, that 

 lurked between air and water, and fled before the giant amphibia 

 of those days. 



For all the folly, blindness and pain of our lives, we have 

 come some way from that. And the distance we have travelled 

 gives us some earnest of the way we have yet to go. 



Why should things cease at man ? Why should not this rising 

 curve rise yet more steeply and swiftly ? There are many things 

 to suggest that we are now in a phase of rapid and unprece- 

 dented development. The conditions under which men live are 

 changing with an ever-increasing rapidity, and, so far as our 

 knowledge goes, no sort of creatures have ever lived under 

 changing conditions without undergoing the profoundest changes 

 themselves. In the past century there was more change in the 

 conditions of human life than there had been in the previous 

 thousand years. A hundred years ago inventors and investi- 

 gators were rare scattered men, and now invention and inquiry 

 is the work of an organised army. This century will see changes 

 that will dwarf those of the nineteenth century as those of the 

 nineteenth dwarf those of the eighteenth. One can see no sign 

 anywhere that this rush of change will be over presently, that 

 the positivist dream of a social reconstruction and of a new- 

 static culture phase will ever be realised. Human society never 

 has been quite static, and it will presently cease to attempt to 

 be static. Everything .seems pointing to the belief that we are 

 entering upon a progress that will go on, with an ever-widening 

 and ever more confident stride, for ever. The reorganisation of 

 society that is going on now beneath the traditional appearance 

 of things is a kinetic reorganisation. We are getting into 

 marching order. We have struck our camp for ever and we 

 are out upon the roads. 



We are in the beginning of the greatest change that humanity 

 has ever undergone. There is no shock, no epoch-making 

 incident — but then there is no shock at a cloudy daybreak. At 

 no point can we say, here it commences, now, last minute was 

 night and this is morning. But insensibly we are in the day. 

 If we care to look we can foresee growing knowledge, growing 

 order, and presently a deliberate improvement of the blood and 

 character of the race. And what we can see and imagine gives 

 us a measure and gives us faith for what surpasses the 

 imagination. 



It is possible to believe that all the past is but the beginning 

 of a beginning, and that all that is and has been is but the 

 twilight of the dawn. It is possible to believe that all that the 

 human mind has ever accomplished is but the dream before the 

 awakening. We cannot see, there is no need for us to see, what 

 this world will be like when the day has fully come. We are 

 creatures of the twilight. But it is out of our race and lineage 

 that minds will spring, that will reach back to us in our little- 

 ness to know us better than we know ourselves, and that will 

 reach forward fearlessly to comprehend this future that defeats 

 our eyes. All this world is heavy with the promise of greater 

 things, and a day will come, one day in the unending succession 

 of days, when beings, beings who are now latent in our thoughts 

 and hidden in our loins, shall stand upon this earth as one 

 stands upon a footstool, and shall laugh and reach out their 

 hands amidst the stars. 



THE WEST INDIAN AGRICULTURAL 

 CONFERENCE, 1902. 



"T^HE fourth Agricultural Conference under the presidency 

 -*■ of Dr. D. Morris, Imperial Commissioner of Agriculture 

 for the West Indies, was held on January 4 to 6. The 

 opening ceremony was attended by the tjovernor and the 

 chief members of the military and civil services of the Colony. 

 The delegates, some sixty in number, included representatives 

 of the scientific and educational staffs of all the West Indian 

 colonies. 



The president delivered an address reviewing the work of 

 the Department of Agriculture during its three years of ex- 

 istence. Under the head of sugar industry, experimental 

 stations were at work at British Guiana, Barbados, Antigua 

 and St. Kitts raising and testing large numbers of seedling 

 canes, and extensive series of experiments were being carried 

 out with manures. The insect and fungoid diseases of the sugar- 

 cane were being carefully worked out, and schemes for central 



