You cannot look back on the darkness from which the race has issued without perceiving that man has the power to transform the face of the earth: without entertaining a reasoned and coldly intellectual conviction that a day will yet dawn on this planet when laughter, as of children on May morning, will ring from pole to pole, and life, for all its work, will be a holiday. And when this reasoned and just belief encounters the sullen or selfish indifference of men and women to their creative power, their insensitiveness to the evils that they or their fellows endure, it glows and spits fire. It is quite easy to apologise for strong language: much easier than to justify the general lack of it. And this impatience cannot be rebuked by reminding us that the remedy of some of our ills is very obscure; because the majority of people are indifferent to the very idea of reform. They shoulder burdens which they might at any moment lay aside for ever. Some of the greatest reforms that are pressed on us are not obscured by any serious controversy. Yet in every civilised nation the mass of the people are inert and indifferent. Some even make a pretence of justifying their inertness. Why, they ask, should we stir at all? Is there such a thing as a duty to improve the earth? What is the meaning or purpose of life? Or has it a purpose? One generally finds that this kind of reasoning is merely a piece of controversial athletics or a thin excuse for idleness. People tell you that the conflict of science and religion--it would be better to say, the conflict of modern culture and ancient traditions--has robbed life of its plain significance. The men who, like Tolstoi, seriously urge this point fail to appreciate the modern outlook on life. Certainly modern culture--science, history, philosophy, and art--finds no purpose in life: that is to say, no purpose eternally fixed and to be discovered by man. A great chemist said a few years ago that he could imagine "a series of lucky accidents"--the chance blowing by the wind of certain chemicals into pools on the primitive earth--accounting for the first appearance of life; and one might not unjustly sum up the influences which have lifted those early germs to the level of conscious beings as a similar series of lucky accidents.