A Forecast of the End 117 



and advancing up heights that are wreathed in mist. 

 Evolution is writ large over every modern city and 

 nearly everything in it. But we cannot open so vast a 

 subject at the close of this short survey, nor can we put 

 great faith in predictions of the future evolution of the 

 human family. That there will be a great evolution is 

 clear, not only from the present pace of progress, but 

 from the fact that the earth is now ruled by a colony of 

 self-conscious beings. The vision that is lit up in the 

 human mind, and the new power that resides in the 

 human will, promise an evolution far greater than any 

 that could be accomplished by the unconscious forces of 

 nature. 



Leaving now this uncertain and fateful future evolution 

 of humanity I turn again, in conclusion, to the broad 

 theatre in which the drama is being played. No one 

 now doubts that that drama will sooner or later be 

 brought to a close. Everything in the universe " has its 

 day and ceases to be," and our little world has plenty of 

 evidence of mortality. Indeed we may carry a step 

 further our comparison of our world to an individual 

 living with myriads of others, of all ages, in the common- 

 wealth of the stellar system. Like the commonwealth 

 of men, the universe has its cradles, its births, its young, 

 middle-aged, and old, and its entombed dead. Like any 

 living man in a great city — we may almost say — our 

 world may conceivably meet its end either by internal 

 malady, by accident in the streets of space, or by slow 

 and senile loss of vitality. Earthquakes and volcanoes 

 remind us of its internal maladies, comets, meteorites, 

 new stars, and dark nebulae raise the question of possible 

 collision, and, if premature end by malady or accident 

 be averted, the extinction of the heart of our solar system 

 gives us absolute certainty of the final termination. 



In regard to the first conceivable possibility, death 



