Page:Last Will and Testament of Cecil Rhodes.djvu/109

Rh but one and all are sectional. The note of catholicity is everywhere lacking. Even the Roman Catholic but touches a decimal of the race. Besides, all the Churches are but of yesterday. They belong to the latest phase of human evolution. What Mr. Rhodes was after was something older and more universal. He found it in the doctrine of evolution. Here, at least, was a law or uniform method of Divine procedure which in point of view of antiquity left nothing to be desired, and which at this present moment is universally active among all sentient beings. What is the distinctive feature of that doctrine? The perfection of the species, attained by the elimination of the unfit; the favourable handicapping of the fit. The most capable species survives, the least capable goes to the wall. The perfecting of the fittest species among the animals, or of races among men, and then the conferring upon the perfected species or race the title-deeds of the future; that seemed to Mr. Rhodes, through his Darwinian spectacles, the way in which God is governing His world, has governed it, and will continue to govern it, so far as we can foresee the future.

The planet being postulated as the area of the Divine activity, and the perfecting of the race by process of natural selection, and the struggle for existence being recognised as the favourite instruments of the Divine Ruler, the question immediately arose as to which race at the present time seems most likely to be the Divine instrument in carrying out the Divine idea over the whole of this planet. The answer may seem to Chauvinists obvious enough. But Mr. Rhodes is not a Chauvinist. He was conducting a serious examination into a supremely important question, and he would take nothing for granted. There are various races of mankind—the Yellow, the