Part 3

Why should things cease at man? Why should not this rising curve rise yet more steeply and swiftly? There are many things to suggest that we are now in a phase of rapid and unprecedented development. The conditions under which men live are changing with an ever-increasing rapidity, and, so far as our knowledge goes, no sort of creatures have ever lived under changing conditions without undergoing the profoundest changes themselves. In the past century there was more change in the conditions of human life than there had been in the previous thousand years. A hundred years ago inventors and investigators were rare scattered men, and now invention and inquiry are the work of an unorganized army. This century will see changes that will dwarf those of the nineteenth century, as those of the nineteenth dwarf those of the eighteenth. One can see no sign anywhere that this rush of change will be over presently, that the positivist dream of a social reconstruction and of a new static culture phase will ever be realized. Human society never has been quite static, and it will presently cease to attempt to be static. Everything seems pointing to the belief that we are entering upon a progress that will go on, with an ever-widening and ever more confident stride, forever. The reorganization of society that is going on now beneath the traditional appearance of things is a kinetic reorganization. We are getting into marching order. We have struck our camp forever and we are out upon the roads.

We are in the beginning of the greatest change that humanity has ever undergone. There is no shock, no epoch-making incident--but then there is no shock at a cloudy daybreak. At no point can we say, "Here it commences, now; last minute was night and this is morning." But insensibly we are in the day. If we care to look, we can foresee growing knowledge, growing order, and presently a deliberate improvement of the blood and character of the race. And what we can see and imagine gives us a measure and gives us faith for what surpasses the imagination.

It is possible to believe that all the past is but the beginning of a beginning, and that all that is and has been is but the twilight of the dawn. It is possible to believe that all that the human mind has ever accomplished is but the dream before the awakening. We cannot see, there is no need for us to see, what this world will be like when the day has fully come. We are creatures of the twilight. But it is out of our race and lineage that minds will spring, that will reach back to us in our littleness to know us better than we know ourselves, and that will reach forward fearlessly to comprehend this future that defeats our eyes.

All this world is heavy with the promise of greater things, and a day will come, one day in the unending succession of days, when beings, beings who are now latent in our thoughts and hidden in our loins, shall stand upon this earth as one stands upon a footstool, and shall laugh and reach out their hands amid the stars.

THE ART of LIFE SERIES

EDWARD HOWARD GRIGGS, Editor

"The aim of this series of brief books is to illuminate the never-to-be-finished art of living. There is no thought of solving the problems or giving dogmatic theories of conduct. Rather the purpose is to bring together in brief form the thoughts of some wise minds and the insight and appreciation of some deep characters, trained in the actual world of experience but attaining a vision of life in clear and wide perspective. Such books should act as a challenge to the reader's own mind, bringing him to a clearer recognition of the problems of his life and the laws governing them, deepening his insight into the wonder and meaning of life and developing an attitude of appreciation that may make possible the wise and earnest facing of the deeps, dark or beautiful, in the life of the personal spirit.--From the Editor's Introduction to the Series, printed in full in "The Use of the Margin."

Volumes ready:

WHERE KNOWLEDGE FAILS

By Earl Barnes

THE SIXTH SENSE. Its cultivation and use.

By Charles H. Brent

THE BURDEN OF POVERTY. What to do.

By Charles F. Dole

HUMAN EQUIPMENT. Its use and abuse.

By Edward Howard Griggs

THE USE OF THE MARGIN

By Edward Howard Griggs

THINGS WORTH WHILE

By Thomas Wentworth Higginson

SELF-MEASUREMENT. A scale of human values with directions for personal application.

By William DeWitt Hyde

THE SUPER RACE. An American problem.

By Scott Nearing

PRODUCT AND CLIMAX

By Simon Nelson Patten

LATTER DAY SINNERS AND SAINTS

By Edward Alsworth Ross