424 Life and Immortahty. 
little less so. Thus, then, do both science and theory point 
to the same conclusion, That which poets hardly dared to 
hope for, the future happiness of our race, science boldly 
predicts. Even in our own time we trust to see some 
wonderful improvement. But the unselfish mind, however, 
will find its highest gratification in the belief that, whatever may 
be the case with ourselves, our descendants will understand 
many things which are mysterious to us now, will better 
appreciate the beautiful world in which we live, avoid much 
of the suffering to which we are subject, enjoy many blessings 
of which we are not yet worthy, and escape many of those 
temptations which we deplore but cannot wholly resist. 
We have thus seen that all life has been progressive. 
There has been through the ages a steadily growing upward 
tendency to higher life. But the changes have mainly 
been in the line of physical form and structure. And 
such, too, had been the case with man, until his social, 
intellectual and moral faculties had begun to assert them- 
selves, when his body ceased in a great measure to be 
acted upon by physical laws, and development began to 
manifest itself in a higher type of mental organization. 
From the low, simple, childlike mind of palzolithic man 
has come that wonderful intellect which now characterizes 
the Germanic races, and which is destined to make itself 
felt in its contact with all the earth. Those peoples that are 
able to embrace the new civilization brought to their doors, 
so to speak, will survive, while the others, unable to adapt 
themselves thereto, like the Tasmanian, will succumb in the 
struggle with a superior being and go to the wall. Animals 
and plants will be brought into new relations and new 
conditions, and such as can meet the new requirements will, 
as certain species have done before, endure. They will, in 
other words, have partaken of an enlightened. civilization. 
Thus things will go on until all life, vegetal and animal, 
will be brought under the controlling and elevating influ- 
ence of man, and then will be inaugurated on earth that 
