We have long since emerged from the heroic childhood of our race, when
good and evil could be met with the same "frolic welcome;" the
attempts to escape from evil, whether Indian or Greek, have ended in
flight from the battle-field; it remains to us to throw aside the
youthful overconfidence and the no less youthful discouragement of
nonage. We are grown men, and must play the man
"...strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield,"
cherishing the good that falls in our way, and bearing the evil, in
and around us, with stout hearts set on diminishing it. So far, we all
may strive in one faith towards one hope:
"... It may be that the gulfs will wash us down,
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
... but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note may yet be done." [Note 24]
[187]
NOTES.
Note 1 (p. 49).
I have been careful to speak of the "appearance" of cyclical evolution
presented by living things; for, on critical examination, it will be
found that the course of vegetable and of animal life is not exactly
represented by, the figure of a cycle which returns into itself. What
actually happens, in all but the lowest organisms, is that one part of
the growing germ (A) gives rise to tissues and organs; while another
part (B) remains in its primitive condition, or is but slightly
modified.
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