The fossil strata show us that Nature began with rudimental forms, and
rose to the more complex, as fast as the earth was fit for their
dwelling-place; and that the lower perish, as the higher appear. Very
few of our race can be said to be yet finished men. We still carry
sticking to us some remains of the preceding inferior quadruped
organization. We call these millions men; but they are not yet men.
Half-engaged in the soil, pawing to get free, man needs all the music
that can be brought to disengage him. If Love, red Love, with tears and
joy; if Want with his scourge; if War with his cannonade; if
Christianity with its charity; if Trade with its money; if Art with its
portfolios; if Science with her telegraphs through the deeps of space
and time; can set his dull nerves throbbing, and by loud taps on the
tough chrysalis, can break its walls, and let the new creature emerge
erect and free,—make way, and sing pæan! The age of the quadruped is to
go out,—the age of the brain and of the heart is to come in. The time
will come when the evil forms we have known can no more be organized.
Man’s culture can spare nothing, wants all the material. He is to
convert all impediments into instruments, all enemies into power. The
formidable mischief will only make the more useful slave. And if one
shall read the future of the race hinted in the organic effort of Nature
to mount and meliorate, and the corresponding impulse to the Better in
the human being, we shall dare affirm that there is nothing he will not
overcome and convert, until at last culture shall absorb the chaos and
gehenna. He will convert the Furies into Muses, and the hells into
benefit.
V.
BEHAVIOR.
Grace, Beauty, and Caprice
Build this golden portal;
Graceful women, chosen men
Dazzle every mortal:
Their sweet and lofty countenance
His enchanting food;
He need not go to them, their forms
Beset his solitude.
He looketh seldom in their face,
His eyes explore the ground,
The green grass is a looking-glass
Whereon their traits are found.
Little he says to them,
So dances his heart in his breast,
Their tranquil mien bereaveth him
Of wit, of words, of rest.
Too weak to win, too fond to shun
The tyrants of his doom,
The much deceived Endymion
Slips behind a tomb.
BEHAVIOR.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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