¥ 
THE WORM STRIVING TO BE MAN 
time that he is squandering his inheritance and will 
mend his ways. He will conserve in the future as he 
has wasted in the past. He will learn to conserve 
his own health. He will banish disease; he will 
stamp out all the plagues and scourges, through his 
scientific knowledge; he will double or treble the 
length of life. Man has undoubtedly passed through 
and finished certain phases of his emotional and 
mental development. He will never again be the 
religious enthusiast and fanatic he has been in the 
past; he has not worshiped his last, but he has 
worshiped his best. He will build no more cathe- 
drals; he will burn no more martyrs at the stake. 
His religion as such is on the wane. But his humani- 
tarianism is a rising tide. He is becoming less and 
less a savage, revolts more and more at the sight of 
blood and suffering. The highly religious ages were 
ages of blood and persecution. Man’s tenderness for 
man has vastly increased. The sense of the sacred- 
ness of human life has increased as his faith in his 
gods has declined. He has grown more human as he 
has grown less superstitious. Science has atrophied 
his faith, but it has softened his heart. His fear of 
Nature has given place to love. Man never loved as 
he does now. He has withdrawn his gaze from hea- 
ven and fixed it upon the earth. As his interest in 
other worlds has diminished, his interest in this has 
increased. As the angels have departed, the child- 
ren have come in. 
195 
