Page:Conventional Lies of our Civilization.djvu/68

51 standard, as well as the individual. Like the individual every species has its law of growth. It arises, has that within it which impels it to attain to a certain standard of size and strength, and last a certain length of time, it grows to a certain point, and then retrogrades and vanishes from the face of the earth, making way for a more elevated form of life, to which it served as a stepping stone, or, I might say as a sketch or design. Paleontology makes us acquainted with a long list of animal species, who lived during one or more geological periods, and then became extinct. The same is also true of the human race. It forms one zoological entity taken as a whole, and is governed by one law of life. It had its origin in a certain geological age (whether this was in the beginning of the Quaternary epoch, or in the middle or latter part of the Tertiary period is a matter of little moment), according to analogy, it will become extinct in some other geological period in the future. We can only guess at the forms of life that preceded it, and those that are to follow it are even beyond our imagination. But as long as the human race lives upon earth, as long as it has not attained to the summit of its development, it will continue to struggle earnestly to fill in the invisible framework of its preordained culture and progress and this struggle for the realization of its ideal, the growth to the height of its unseen standard, is felt and experienced by every single member of the human family, with the exception of idiots, although of course most men perceive it only dimly and without comprehending its true import. This dim perception becomes consciousness in cultivated minds. In others, less cultivated, it remains in the stage of an indistinct, impelling longing, which we can call an impulse towards higher things, or a yearning for the ideal, as we may prefer, and which under either name, is nothing else than an