Page:Adams - Essays in Modernity.djvu/88

76 fratricidal and insane than at this very hour. She ruins us through our stupidity. As the capitalistic monopolist, in this her true incarnation, exploits the masses of humanity by merely letting them compete among themselves; so Nature exploits cities, nations, and races. The ultimate crisis for humanity lies clearly in the hour when the globe shall become uninhabitable. As the moon is, so shall the earth be. Did the cities, nations, and races of the moon go on competing among themselves to the end? Did they see the beauty of Nature's delusive and fleshly smile on fecund land and sea slowly transform itself into the mocking grin of the hideous skeleton of dry, lightless, and heatless death? And did no suspicion of the trick that had been played on them ever cross their minds? Or did the intellectual élite of that hapless stock feel, or even realise and recognise it; but, powerless to control the ineptitude of their fellows, sigh over the "infinita vanità del tutto," and steal away to die? Does that same fate await us? Or may we some day discover not only the secret of life and of actual physical immortality, but learn how to arrest the cooling of the earth, or, if that be impossible (though to science all things are possible), migrate to another planet? Who can say?—who can say?'

He paused, looking out into the far and all but