necessarily doomed to perish. We have learnt to observe her more
attentively and we have won the right to judge her. We have discovered
that, far from being infallible, she is continually making mistakes.
She gropes and hesitates. She does not know precisely what she wants.
She begins by making stupendous blunders. She first peoples the world
with uncouth and incoherent monsters, not one of which is capable of
living; these all disappear. Gradually she acquires, at the cost of
the life which she creates, an experience that is the cruel fruit of
the immeasurable suffering which she unfeelingly inflicts. At last she
grows wiser, curbs and amends herself, corrects herself, returns upon
her footsteps, repairs her errors, expending her best energies and her
highest intelligence upon the correction. It is incontestable that she
is improving her methods, that she is more skillful, more prudent,
less extravagant than at the outset. And yet the fact remains that, in
every department of life, in every organism, down to our own bodies,
there is a survival of bad workmanship, of twofold functions, of
oversights, changes of intention, absurdities, useless complications
and meaningless waste. We therefore have no reason to believe that our
enemies are in the right because earth is with them. Earth does not
possess the truth any more than we do. She seeks it, even as we do,
and discovers it no more readily. She seems to know no more than we
whither she is going nor whither she is being led by that which leads
all things. We must not listen to her without enquiry; and we need not
distress ourselves or despair because we are not of her opinion. We
are not dealing with an infallible and unchangeable wisdom, to oppose
which in our thoughts would be madness. We are actually proving to
her that it is she who is in the wrong; that man's reason for
existence is loftier than that which she provisionally assigned to
him; that he is already outstripping all that she foresaw; and that
she does wrong to delay his advance. She is, for that matter, full of
goodwill, is able on occasion to recognize her mistakes and to obviate
their disastrous results and by no means takes refuge in majestic and
inflexible self-conceit. If we are able to persevere, we shall be able
to convince her. This will take much time, for, I repeat, she is slow,
though in no wise obstinate. It will take much time because a very
long future is in question, a very great change and