"At first it would be, for the virtues of civilisation are of a higher type than those of barbarism. Kindness is better than courage, and charity more than strength. But ultimately the dominant race will degenerate, and as there will be none to take its place, the degeneration must continue. It is the old struggle between vitality and decay, between energy and indolence; a struggle that always ends in silence. After all, we could not expect human developement to be constant. It is only a question of time before the planet becomes unfitted to support life on its surface." "But you said that fitness must ultimately triumph." "Over relative unfitness, yes. But decay will involve all, victors and vanquished. The fire of life will die out, the spirit of vitality become extinct." "In this world perhaps." "In every world. All the universe is cooling--dying, that is,--and as it cools, life for a spell becomes possible on the surface of its spheres, and plays strange antics. And then the end comes; the universe dies and is sepulchred in the cold darkness of ultimate negation." "To what purpose then are all our efforts?" "God knows," said Savrola cynically; "but I can imagine that the drama would not be an uninteresting one to watch." "And yet you believe in an ultra-human foundation, an eternal ideal for such things as beauty and virtue." "I believe that the superiority of fitness over relative unfitness is one of the great laws of matter. I include all kinds of fitness,--moral, physical, mathematical." "Mathematical!" "Certainly; words only exist by conforming to correct mathematical principles. That is one of the great proofs we have that mathematics have been discovered, not invented. The planets observe a regular progression in their distances from the sun. Evolution suggests that those that did not observe such principles were destroyed by collisions and amalgamated with others. It is a universal survival of the fittest." She was silent. He continued: "Now let us say that in the beginning there existed two factors, matter animated by the will to live, and the eternal ideal; the great author and the great critic. It is to the interplay and counter-action of these two that all developement, that all forms of life are due. The more the expression of the will to live approximates to the eternal standard of fitness, the better it succeeds." "I would add a third," she said; "a great Being to instil into all forms of life the desire to attain to the ideal; to teach them in what ways they may succeed." "It is pleasant," he replied, "to think that such a Being exists to approve our victories, to cheer our struggles, and to light our way; but it is not scientifically or logically necessary to assume one after the two factors I have spoken of are once at work." "Surely the knowledge that such an ultra-human ideal existed must have been given from without."