CHAPTER II
THE LIFE OF THE WORLD TO COME
When we survey the past of the earth as science has revealed it to us,
we gain some conceptions which will help us in our judgments as to what
this phenomenon of human life may signify in the future. We are
accustomed to look upon the earth as aged, but these terms are only
relative; and if we compare our own planet with its neighbours in the
solar system, we shall have good reason to suppose that, though the past
of the earth is very prolonged, its future will probably be far more so.
As for life--and we must think not only of human life, but of life as a
planetary phenomenon--that is necessarily much more recent than the
formation even of the earth's crust, the existence of water in the
liquid state being necessary for life in any of its forms. And human
life itself, though the extent of its past duration is seen to be
greater the more deeply we study the records, is yet a relatively recent
thing. The utmost, it appears, that we can assign to our past would be
perhaps six million years, taking our species back to mid-Miocene times.
Doubtless this is a mighty age as compared with the few thousand years
allotted to us in bygone chronologies; but, looked at _sub specie
aeternitatis_, and with an eye which is prepared to look forward also,
and especially with relation to what we know and can predict regarding
the sun, these past six million years may reasonably be held to comprise
only the infantine period of man's life.
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