To this increasing purpose there will come, I suppose, an end--an inscrutable end. Yearly the evidence makes it more probable that in a sister world we are gazing upon the splendid efforts of purposeful, intelligent, co-ordinated life to battle against planetary conditions which threaten it with death by thirst. How long intelligence has existed upon Mars, if intelligence there be, no one can say; nor yet what its future will be. It would seem probable that our own fate must be similar, but it is far removed. And though the Whole may seem wanton, purposeless, stupid, we are very little folk; we see very dimly; we see only what we have the capacity to see; and there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in the philosophy of the wisest of us. So also there are many events in the womb of time which will be delivered. We are the shapers, the creators, the parents of those events. The still, small voice of the unborn declares our responsibility. There may be no reward. What does reward mean? Who rewards the sun, or the rain, or the oak, or the tigress? But there is the doing of one's work in the world, the serving of the highest and most real purpose that may be revealed to us. That is to be oneself, to fulfil one's destiny, to be a part of the universe, and worthy to be such a part. And though it be even unworthy for us to suggest that at least posterity will be grateful to us, such a thought may perhaps console us a little. At any rate, to those who worship and live for the past, we may offer this alternative: let them work for what will be. Perhaps the reward will be as real as any that the worship of what is not can offer. And, reward or no reward, it is something to have an ideal, something to believe that earth may become heavenly, and that, in some real sense which we can dimly perceive, we may be part--must be part, indeed--of that great day which is in our keeping, and which it is our privilege to have some share in shaping. Thus we may repeat, and thrill to repeat, with new meaning, the old but still living words, _Expecto resurrectionem mortuorum, et vitam venturi saeculi_--"I look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come." CHAPTER III THE PURPOSE OF WOMANHOOD