173 



tion. It is true, also, that in the intercourse of 

 nation with nation, contentions and wars still un- 

 happily exist ; but with every stage of civilisation 

 the greater becomes the desire to avert misunder- 

 standing; and even the very instruments which 

 science invents for protection or for destruction be- 

 come the means of divesting warfare of much of its 

 protracted miseries and brutal barbarities. And as 

 this and other ameliorations have come exclu- 

 sively with the newer and higher race, so in the 

 future will higher and higher stages be attained by 

 newer and stiU more exalted varieties. 



Nothing stands stUl. AU that we perceive in ex- 

 ternal nature is ever and incessantly passing into 

 newer and other phases ; all that we have learned 

 of past life marks an ascent from lower to higher and 

 higher forms ; all that we can gather from history 

 marks a similar mutation and progress in the intel- 

 lectual, social, and moral relations of man. Eaces 

 may come and go, nationalities may rise and fall, but 

 BtUl the aggregate movement of humanity has ever 

 been onward and upward. We may point to 

 Babylonians, Egyptians, Phoenicians, Greeks, and 

 Komans, as attaining each to exalted stages of 

 civilisation; but the later ever evolved some new 

 phase unknown to those who went before, and exer- 

 cised a wider, if not a higher, influence. Nothing 



