“And the gist of the meaning is this: that side by side with the evolution of world forms, from the liquid lava wave to the solid rock, from the rock to the saurian, and from the saurian to man, has gone the evolution of world character and the development of a world spirit; and that the beauty of kindliness and benignity and good receives its deep, deep significance from the fact that all the labour of the world since the first cooling of its fires has been directed along the path leading to these three gods. Nothing is more clear than that, and nothing can be more definitely proved. There is no use at all in fixing your eyes on the Jurassic period and saying, ‘What monsters are here!’ or on a London slum and saying, ‘How terrible life is! It can have no meaning!’ There is no use in fixing your eyes on a thousand years of history and saying, ‘I see no development. Men were as good then as they are now.’ You must take a billion years in your purview, to see the amazing and glorious thing as it is, and then what you will see will be strangely like the growth and unfolding of a flower—or the flowering of a bramble.” [Sidenote: Hard Facts] “I believe in dreams, but I have no faith except in hard facts. Those hard facts tell me that the sun, toward which everything grows to-day, is the same sun toward which the seas and the hills and the rocks grew before life exhibited itself first, and toward which life has grown since its birth; and that sun is the sun of Amelioration, Benignity, Good, and Gentleness. Let us call it by the great good word that embraces all these things: Good. Well, then, the world, since the beginning, has grown toward Good.” “Do you deny the soul?” “I do not. I know nothing about it. I am quite content to live in a world that is slowly and steadily developing in benignity, and to assist that development in my small way by trying to develop the benignity in myself. “I do not trouble about my soul one iota, but I am deeply concerned to keep on that upward path along which earth is ascending.” [Sidenote: The Imitation of Earth] “Ah, but how can one do that?” “By copying what the earth has done; by freeing oneself as much as possible from ferocity, hatred, lust, and cruelty.” “But you are neither ferocious nor cruel?” “Perhaps not actively, but just as I carry in my material brain the eye of the extinct monster I once was, so do I carry in my mind the remnants of the passions of the reptile that once was me, the lust of the reptile and the hatred. I do not tear other human beings with my teeth, but I have torn them by deeds and words. I have been cruel—who has not? lustful—who has not? inspired by hatred—who has not? I have regretted these things—who has not?—and forgotten them—who has not?”