The physical evolution of man, as I have said, is no doubt complete.
He will never have wings, or more legs, or longer arms, or a bigger
brain. The wings and the extra legs and the keener sense he has left
behind him. His development henceforth must be in the mental and
spiritual. He is bound to have more and more dominion over Nature,
and see more and more clearly his own relation to her. He will in
time completely subdue and possess the earth. Yes, and probably
exhaust her? But he will see in time that he is squandering his
inheritance and will mend his ways. He will conserve in the future
as he has wasted in the past. He will learn to conserve his own
health. He will banish disease; he will stamp out all the plagues
and scourges, through his scientific knowledge; he will double or
treble the length of life. Man has undoubtedly passed through and
finished certain phases of his emotional and mental development. He
will never again be the religious enthusiast and fanatic he has been
in the past; he has not worshiped his last, but he has worshiped his
best. He will build no more cathedrals; he will burn no more martyrs
at the stake. His religion as such is on the wane. But his
humanitarianism is a rising tide. He is becoming less and less a
savage, revolts more and more at the sight of blood and suffering.
The highly religious ages were ages of blood and persecution. Man's
tenderness for man has vastly increased. The sense of the sacredness
of human life has increased as his faith in his gods has declined.
He has grown more human as he has grown less superstitious. Science
has atrophied his faith, but it has softened his heart. His fear of
Nature has given place to love. Man never loved as he does now. He
has withdrawn his gaze from heaven and fixed it upon the earth. As
his interest in other worlds has diminished, his interest in this
has increased. As the angels have departed, the children have come
in.
When the nations, too, cease to be savage and selfish, and become
altruistic, then the new birth of humanity will actually have
occurred. As an artist and a creator of beautiful forms, man has
also had his day; he loved the beautiful, the artistic, or the
ornamental long before he loved the true and the just. He was proud
before he was kind; he was chivalrous before he was decent; he was
tattooed before he was washed; he was painted before he was clothed;
he built temples before he built a home; he sacrificed to his gods
before he helped his neighbor; he was heroic before he was
self-denying; he was devout before he was charitable. We are losing
the savage virtues and vanities and growing in the grace of all the
humanities, and this process will doubtless go on, with many
interruptions and setbacks of course, till the kingdom of love is at
last fairly established upon the earth.
XI
THE PHANTOMS BEHIND US
I
I take the title of this paper from those great lines in Whitman
beginning--
"Rise after rise bow the phantoms behind me"--
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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