The Destiny of Man eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 63 pages of information about The Destiny of Man.

The Destiny of Man eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 63 pages of information about The Destiny of Man.

Let us note one further aspect of this mighty revolution.  In its lowly beginnings the psychical life was merely an appendage to the life of the body.  The avoidance of enemies, the securing of food, the perpetuation of the species, make up the whole of the lives of lower animals, and the rudiments of memory, reason, emotion, and volition were at first concerned solely with the achievement of these ends in an increasingly indirect, complex, and effective way.  Though the life of a large portion of the human race is still confined to the pursuit of these same ends, yet so vast has been the increase of psychical life that the simple character of the ends is liable to be lost sight of amid the variety, the indirectness, and the complexity of the means.  But in civilized society other ends, purely immaterial in their nature, have come to add themselves to these, and in some instances to take their place.  It is long since we were told that Man does not live by bread alone.  During many generations we have seen thousands of men, actuated by the noblest impulse of which humanity is capable, though misled by the teachings of a crude philosophy, despising and maltreating their bodies as clogs and incumbrances to the life of the indwelling soul.  Countless martyrs we have seen throwing away the physical earthly life as so much worthless dross, and all for the sake of purely spiritual truths.  As with religion, so with the scientific spirit and the artistic spirit,—­the unquenchable craving to know the secrets of nature, and the yearning to create the beautiful in form and colour and sound.  In the highest human beings such ends as these have come to be uppermost in consciousness, and with the progress of material civilization this will be more and more the case.  If we can imagine a future time when warfare and crime shall have been done away with forever, when disease shall have been for the most part curbed, and when every human being by moderate labour can secure ample food and shelter, we can also see that in such a state of things the work of civilization would be by no means completed.  In ministering to human happiness in countless ways, through the pursuit of purely spiritual ends, in enriching and diversifying life to the utmost, there would still be almost limitless work to be done.  I believe that such a time will come for weary and suffering mankind.  Such a faith is inspiring.  It sustains one in the work of life, when one would otherwise lose heart.  But it is a faith that rests upon induction.  The process of evolution is excessively slow, and its ends are achieved at the cost of enormous waste of life, but for innumerable ages its direction has been toward the goal here pointed out; and the case may be fitly summed up in the statement that whereas in its rude beginnings the psychical life was but an appendage to the body, in fully-developed Humanity the body is but the vehicle for the soul.

IX.

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The Destiny of Man from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.