thing in life. True, it now follows, according to physiological law, upon the satisfaction of certain tendencies of our nature, which in themselves may be gratified, and even worthily gratified, without reference to anything but the present; yet these tendencies, commonly reviled and regarded with contempt--at least overt contempt--exist, like most of our attributes, for the life of the world to come. And that in which they may result, the bringing of new human life into the world, is the most tremendous, as it is the most mysterious, of our possibilities. The laws of life are such that at any given moment the entire future is absolutely at the mercy of the present. The laws of life, indeed; one might have said the law of universal causation. But so it is. There is no conceivable limit to our responsibility. We act for the moment, we act for self; but there will be no end to the consequences. When the stuff of which our bodies are made has passed through a thousand cycles, the consequences of our brief moments will still be felt. This dependence of the future upon the present in the world of life is an almost unrealizable thing. Life could not have persisted upon such conditions had not Nature from the first, and increasingly up to our own day (for it is the human infant that is the most helpless, and the longest helpless), had not Nature, I say, persistently constructed the individual, in all his or her attributes, as a being whose warrant and purpose lay yet beyond. We are organs of the race, whether we will or no. We are made for the future, whether we will, whether we care, or no. We are only obeying Nature, and therefore in a position to command her, in dedicating ourselves and our purposes, our customs, our social structures, to the life of the world to come. We shall be there. Our purposes and hopes, the flesh and blood of many of us, will be there. Posterity will be what we make it, as we, alas! are what our ancestors have made us.