Page:The age of Justinian and Theodora (Volume 1).djvu/313

 *ing the hope of a brighter future for his descendants; no obstacle appears in view to bar their journey along the upward path; the illimitable capacity of protoplasm for physiological elevation may triumph over the universal cycle of birth, maturity, and decay; and in humanity as it exists we may see the progenitors of an infinitely superior, perhaps of an immortal race, the ultimate expression and end of evolution and generation.

now be ready to make his own quietus with a bare bodkin should the currents turn awry. He would stand to his post till the last hour, working for the advancement of science. "Les stoiciens n'étaient occupés qu'a travailler au bonheur des hommes, à exercer les devoirs de la société: il semblait qu'ils regardassant cet esprit sacré qu'ils croyaient être en eux-mêmes, comme une espèce de providence favorable qui veillait sur le genre humain"; Montesquieu, Esprit des Lois, xxiv, 10. See Plutarch, De Stoic. Repug., 13; Adv. Stoicos, 33; Seneca, De Provid., 1; Epist., cvi; cxvii, etc.; Epictetus, ii, 8, 9; Lactantius, Div. Inst., i, 5, 27, etc.]*
 * [Footnote: race and a devotion to the evolution of humanity. The Stoic would not