Who shall teach us wisdom, and in what manner may we be wise?
What say the sages of the vast possibilities of the race? With one voice
they say: Be brave! Do not cower, shrink, or whine. Throw out upon the
world a free fearlessness of thought and word and deed. Courage,
freedom, heroism, faith, exactness, honor, justice, and mercy--these
traits have been handed down as the traditional learning of the heart
of man.
Another ideal of the race is Law. We have given up a
chaos-philosophy--the haphazard continuity of events--a cometary orbit,
for the world. There are fixed relations everywhere existent: the
succession of cycles is orderly and prearranged.
Another ideal is Progress. We are moving, not toward the bottom, but
toward the top of possibility. We reject annihilation, because then
there is nothing left. And there must always be something
left--progress--a bigger something, a better something. Should
annihilation be the truth of things, and all the race mortal, then some
day there would be a Last Man. And after the Last Man, what? He would
die, and then all that any of the other stars could view of the vast
panorama of our earthly generations would be an unburied corpse, with
not even a vulture hovering to pick it to freshness in the air!
A Last Man? No.
Pages:
159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170
171
172
173
174
175
176
177
178
179
180
181
182
183