Good is rising and evil
sinking like oil and water in a bottle. The race is
improving. There are far fewer criminal convictions.
There is far more education. People sin less and think
more. When I meet a brutal looking fellow I often think
that he and his type may soon be as extinct as the great
auk. I am not sure that in the interest of the 'ologies
we ought not to pickle a few specimens of Bill Sykes, to
show our children's children what sort of a person he
was.
And then the more we progress the more we tend to
progress. We advance not in arithmetical but in
geometrical progression. We draw compound interest on
the whole capital of knowledge and virtue which has been
accumulated since the dawning of time. Some eighty
thousand years are supposed to have existed between
paleolithic and neolithic man. Yet in all that time he
only learned to grind his flint stones instead of
chipping them. But within our father's lives what
changes have there not been? The railway and the
telegraph, chloroform and applied electricity. Ten years
now go further than a thousand then, not so much on
account of our finer intellects as because the light we
have shows us the way to more. Primeval man stumbled
along with peering eyes, and slow, uncertain footsteps.
Now we walk briskly towards our unknown goal.
And I wonder what that goal is to be! I mean, of
course, as far as this world is concerned.
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