erday of geologic time, humanity
was not. In the to-morrow of geologic time, it will not be. The very
mountains might be made of souls, and all the stars of heaven kindled
with souls, such is the wealth of Nature in what we deem so precious,
and so indifferent is she to our standards of valuation.

This I know, too: that the grave is not dark or cold to the dead, but
only to the living. The light of the eye, the warmth of the body,
still exist undiminished in the universe, but in other relations,
under other forms. Shall the flower complain because it fades and
falls? It has to fall before the fruit can appear. But what is the
fruit of the flower of human life? Surely not the grave, as the loose
thinking of some seem to imply. The only fruit I can see is in fairer
flowers, or a higher type of mind and life that follows in this world,
and to which our lives may contribute. The flower of life has improved
through the ages--the geologic ages; from the flower of the brute, it
has become the flower of the man. You and I perish, but something goes
out, or may go out, from us that will help forward a higher type of
mankind. To what end? Who knows? We cannot cross-question the
Infinite. Something in the universe has eventuated in man, and
something has profited by his ameliorations. We must regard him as a
legitimate product, and we must look upon death as a legitimate part
of the great cycle--an evil only from our temporary and personal point
of view, but a good from the point of view of the whole.

THE END

INDEX

Adaptation, 247, 248.

Agassiz, Louis, 163.

Alchemy, 242, 243.

Alcott, Amos Bronson, in Emerson's Journals, 26-29;
on Thoreau, 156.

Aldrich, Thomas Bailey, 253.

Alphabet, the, 275, 276.

American people, the, 252, 253.

Amiel, Henri Frederic, 4-6;
quoted, 223.

Arnim, Elisabeth von, 34, 35.

Arnold, Matthew, 213, 250, 260;
in Emerson's Journals, 25;
on Emerson, 87, 89, 90;
his poetry, 209;
on poetry, 212.

Art, recent "isms" in, 278, 279.

Audacity, 261.

Aurora borealis, 140, 141.

Batavia Kill, 244.

Beauty, 98-101, 246, 247, 251, 252.

Beecher, Henry Ward, 232.

Bent, following one's, 280, 281.

Benton, Myron, 26.

Bergson, Henri, his "Creative Evolution," revised estimate of, 264-66;
and telepathy, 267, 268.

Bettina, Goethe's, 34, 35.

Bittern, pumping, 135.

Boldness, 261.

Bouton, Deborah, 244.

Bryant, William Cullen, his poetry, 203,