In regard to a future life, Darwin recognized, in a passage I have quoted earlier, that a belief in it was needed to complete the process established here, and the dire necessity of the belief comes out clearly in the passage suggesting the tragic physical future of this earth: ‘I quite agree how humiliating the slow progress of man is, but every one has his own pet horror, and this slow progress ... sinks in my mind into insignificance compared with the idea or rather I presume certainty of the sun some day cooling and we all freezing. To think of the progress of millions of years with every continent swarming with good and enlightened men, all ending in this, and with probably no fresh start until this our planetary system has been again converted into red-hot gas.’[168] Yet when the question of the future has been debated over and over, the result, as with other questions, is complete muddle and puzzle, and all that can be said of them is: ‘The conclusion that I always come to after thinking of such questions is that they are beyond the human intellect; and the less one thinks on them, the better.’[169] What at least stands out, is that Darwin does not greatly concern himself with the enormous dislocation of life in this world which is likely to follow the loss of belief in another. And again, there is evolution and God. Darwin frequently insists that he is no atheist, and that his system must not be charged with any atheistical conclusion: ‘Let each man hope and believe what he can. Certainly I agree with you that my views are not at all necessarily atheistical.’[170] The belief in God is eminently useful: ‘With the more civilized races, the conviction of the existence of an all-seeing Deity has had a potent influence on the advance of morality.’[171] At every convenient opportunity God is given fair play and a fighting chance: it rests with Him to make the most of it. At the same time, the obstacles and difficulties are mountainous and it would appear insuperable. Thus, there is the conclusion of ‘Plants and Animals Under Domestication’: ‘If we assume that each particular variation was from the beginning of all time preordained, then that plasticity of organization, which leads to many injurious deviations of structure, as well as the redundant power of reproduction which inevitably leads to a struggle for existence, and, as a consequence, to the natural selection or survival of the fittest, must appear to us superfluous laws of nature. On the other hand, an omnipotent and omniscient Creator ordains everything and foresees everything. Thus we are brought face to face with a difficulty as insoluble as is that of free will and predestination.’[172]