So it puts forth its gay blossoms, and
the wandering insect bears the message from seed-pod to seed-pod.
And the seasons pass, bringing with them the sunshine and the rain,
till the flower withers, never having known the real purpose for
which it lived, thinking the garden was made for it, not it for the
garden. The coral insect dreams in its small soul, which is
possibly its small stomach, of home and food. So it works and
strives deep down in the dark waters, never knowing of the
continents it is fashioning.
But the question still remains: for what purpose is it all?
Science explains it to us. By ages of strife and effort we improve
the race; from ether, through the monkey, man is born. So, through
the labour of the coming ages, he will free himself still further
from the brute. Through sorrow and through struggle, by the sweat
of brain and brow, he will lift himself towards the angels. He will
come into his kingdom.
But why the building? Why the passing of the countless ages? Why
should he not have been born the god he is to be, imbued at birth
with all the capabilities his ancestors have died acquiring? Why
the Pict and Hun that _I_ may be? Why _I_, that a descendant of my
own, to whom I shall seem a savage, shall come after me? Why, if
the universe be ordered by a Creator to whom all things are
possible, the protoplasmic cell? Why not the man that is to be?
Shall all the generations be so much human waste that he may live?
Am I but another layer of the soil preparing for him?
Or, if our future be in other spheres, then why the need of this
planet? Are we labouring at some Work too vast for us to perceive?
Are our passions and desires mere whips and traces by the help of
which we are driven? Any theory seems more hopeful than the thought
that all our eager, fretful lives are but the turning of a useless
prison crank.
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