Page:Adams - Essays in Modernity.djvu/86

74 indeed, come to look upon as a more or less unjustifiable waste of myself. I mention it now to account in a measure for the nebulous condition of what I have called my latest socialistic conclusions. If I had not been occupied with thought and dream and vision concerning the far future of the race, I should not have been distracted to the extent to which, as it seems to me now, I certainly was, with regard to the path the race must inevitably take if that far future is ever to be realised. Yes,' he went on, unconsciously failing in his purpose of speaking only of the actual subject, and undergoing the sweet, irresistible charm which we all find in our favourite day-dreams; 'yes, if that craving for an immortality of happiness, for a continuous existence of freedom from the cruel combat which Nature delights in, is ever to be satisfied, it can only be by the very best combinations of human intelligence and skill. All creatures own that craving. The birds that build their nests long dumbly, even as we weary humans long articulately, for a city that hath foundations. Watching under the microscope the lowest organisms known to us, I have felt the thrill of pity for these infinitesimal atoms of life which would fain, they too, live and move and have a being. In the chemist's bowls and crucibles I have recognised that the wrestlings of the warring elements prefigured, if they