Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 71.djvu/172

166 of his lecture, on which he is a far better guide and an infinitely higher authority than myself.

In giving the following sketch of the history of eugenics I am obliged to be egotistical, because I kindled the feeble flame that struggled doubtfully for a time until it caught hold of adjacent stores of suitable material, and became a brisk fire, burning freely by itself, and again because I have had much to do with its progress quite recently.

The word "eugenics" was coined and used by me in my book "Human Faculty," published as long ago as 1883, which has long been out of print; it is, however, soon to be re-published in a cheap form. In it I emphasized the essential brotherhood of mankind, heredity being to my mind a very real thing; also the belief that we are born to act, and not to wait for help like able-bodied idlers, whining for doles. Individuals appear to me as finite detachments from an infinite ocean of being, temporarily endowed with executive powers. This is the only answer I can give to myself in reply to the perpetually recurring questions of "Why? whence? and whither?" The immediate "whither?" does not seem wholly dark, as some little information may be gleaned concerning the direction in which nature, so far as we know of it, is now moving. Namely, towards the evolution of mind, body and character in increasing energy and co-adaptation.

I have often wondered that the poem of Hyperion, by Keats—that magnificent torso of an incompleted work—has not been placed in the very forefront of past speculations on evolution. Keats is so thorough that he makes the very divinities to be its product. The earliest gods such as Cœlus, born out of Chaos, are vague entities, they engender Saturn, Oceanus, Hyperion, and the Titan brood, who superseded them. These in their turn are ousted from dominion by their own issue, the Olympian Gods. A notable advance occurs at each successive stage in the quality of the divinities. When Hyperion, newly terrified by signs of impending overthrow, lies prostrate on the earth "his ancient mother, for some comfort yet," the voice of Cœlus from the universal space, thus "whispered low and solemn in his ear. . . yet do thou strive for thou art capable. . . my life is but the life of winds and tides, no more than winds and tides can I prevail, but thou canst." I have quoted only disjointed fragments of this wonderful poem, enough to serve as a reminder to those who know it, but will add ten consecutive lines from the speech of the fallen Oceanus to his comrades, which give a summary of evolution as here described:

 As Heaven and Earth are fairer, fairer far Than Chaos and black Darkness, though once chiefs. And as we show beyond that Heaven and Earth In form and shape compact and beautiful, In Will, in action free, companionship,