80 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES 



If this were all, man's outlook would indeed be dark. According to 

 temperament we might as well sit with folded hands in a darkened room 

 awaiting the inevitable end, or meet the crash with ribaldry and riot. 

 Our peculiar quality of superior mentality seems but a suicidal acquisition, 

 hastening and intensifying the imminent doom. But the human mind is 

 more than a fabricator of evanescent institutions. It can transcend 

 utilitarianism (wherein it but exaggerates animal qualities) and can form 

 idealistic conceptions. 



Ideas of chivalry, honour and self-sacrifice have no place in the struggle 

 for existence ; but they are inherent in all but hypersophisticated minds. 

 Among ordinary folk, conceptions such as these are stronger incentives 

 to action than animal impulses, as even the most rascally demagogue 

 knows. Learning, philosophy and art are realities to which men will 

 devote their lives, creating rather than copying, with no ulterior or 

 mercenary aim. The arts and virtues bring a new and incalculable 

 feature into the story of evolution. Some, at least, of their achievements 

 outlive kingdoms and empires, seeming immortal. 



Men are, for the most part, enthusiastic admirers of virtue, even to the 

 extent of devising laws to ensure its maintenance. Very many of them are 

 actual exponents of virtue in their personal relations ; but in public affairs 

 and in the mass they are often content to behave as animals rather than 

 as men. ' Manners makyth man ' is perhaps the most concise specific 

 diagnosis ever published. But there is only one law of evolution, common 

 to individuals and races alike. If mankind as a whole neglects its ' manners,' 

 it abandons any claim it may have to qualitative difference from other 

 animals. There is no doubt of man's ability to become the most successful 

 type of animal that has ever existed ; but the reward of success in that 

 direction is death. 



The love of truth, greatest of all virtues, is especially an attribute of men 

 of science. In this we are idealists, for the truth is unattainable, how- 

 ever worth the seeking. We know that all the progress that our species 

 has made, in material as well as in mental affairs, is the result of the 

 search for truth. We find ourselves strangers in a world riddled with 

 more or less blatant deceit ; but we still follow our ideal, confident that all 

 other paths are blind. We recognise in the conception of truth something 

 eternal, not subject to the laws of change and decay. 



We know that idealism is the goal and incentive in all actions that can 

 truly be described as human. To the idealist environment is something 

 to be overcome or adapted into service ; the story of human progress is 

 one of triumph over circumstances. The self-styled ' realist,' who 

 advocates acceptance of, and submission to, his temporary environment, 

 is less than a man ; he follows in the tradition of the beasts that perish. 



To idealists Palaeontology has no message, save to welcome them as 

 something new in Nature. To realists, who seek material success in the 

 struggle for existence, Palaeontology, with millions of years of history as 

 its authority, declares emphatically ' You have been warned.' 



