We are organs of the race, whether we will or
no. We are made for the future, whether we will, whether we care, or no.
We are only obeying Nature, and therefore in a position to command her,
in dedicating ourselves and our purposes, our customs, our social
structures, to the life of the world to come. We shall be there. Our
purposes and hopes, the flesh and blood of many of us, will be there.
Posterity will be what we make it, as we, alas! are what our ancestors
have made us.
To this increasing purpose there will come, I suppose, an end--an
inscrutable end. Yearly the evidence makes it more probable that in a
sister world we are gazing upon the splendid efforts of purposeful,
intelligent, co-ordinated life to battle against planetary conditions
which threaten it with death by thirst. How long intelligence has
existed upon Mars, if intelligence there be, no one can say; nor yet
what its future will be. It would seem probable that our own fate must
be similar, but it is far removed. And though the Whole may seem wanton,
purposeless, stupid, we are very little folk; we see very dimly; we see
only what we have the capacity to see; and there are more things in
heaven and earth than are dreamt of in the philosophy of the wisest of
us. So also there are many events in the womb of time which will be
delivered. We are the shapers, the creators, the parents of those
events.
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