in all his or her attributes, as a being whose warrant and
purpose lay yet beyond. We are organs of the race, whether we will or
no. We are made for the future, whether we will, whether we care, or no.
We are only obeying Nature, and therefore in a position to command her,
in dedicating ourselves and our purposes, our customs, our social
structures, to the life of the world to come. We shall be there. Our
purposes and hopes, the flesh and blood of many of us, will be there.
Posterity will be what we make it, as we, alas! are what our ancestors
have made us.

To this increasing purpose there will come, I suppose, an end--an
inscrutable end. Yearly the evidence makes it more probable that in a
sister world we are gazing upon the splendid efforts of purposeful,
intelligent, co-ordinated life to battle against planetary conditions
which threaten it with death by thirst. How long intelligence has
existed upon Mars, if intelligence there be, no one can say; nor yet
what its future will be. It would seem probable that our own fate must
be similar, but it is far removed. And though the Whole may seem wanton,
purposeless, stupid, we are very little folk; we see very dimly; we see
only what we have the capacity to see; and there are more things in
heaven and earth than are dreamt of in the philosophy of the wisest of
us. So also there are many events in the womb of time which will be
delivered. We are the shapers, the creators, the parents of those
events. The still, small voice of the unborn declares our
responsibility. There may be no reward. What does reward mean? Who
rewards the sun, or the rain, or the oak, or the tigress? But there is
the doing of one's work in the world, the serving of the highest and
most real purpose that may be revealed to us. That is to be oneself, to
fulfil one's destiny, to be a part of the universe, and worthy to be
such a part. And though it be even unworthy for us to suggest that at
least posterity will be grateful to us, such a thought may perhaps
console us a little. At any rate, to those who worship and live for the
past, we may offer this alternative: let them work for what will be.
Perhaps the reward will be as real as any that the worship of what is
not can offer. And, reward or no reward, it is something to have an
ideal, something to believe that earth may become heavenly, and that, in
some real sense which we can dimly perceive, we may be part--must be
part, indeed--of that great day whic