, some of them easy and some of them difficult to read. But
reading prophecies is not prophesying. I shall not prophesy, but rather
endeavor to understand and to interpret a few of the many voices which
have spoken, and are speaking, on this subject.

The soul is itself a prediction of what it is to be. It utters a various
language.

The growth of intelligence is prophetic. Savage tribes suggest the
original condition of primitive man. The pigmies in Africa afford hints
of Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel. From such as they, and from lower types
still, the race has slowly and painfully risen. In them a certain rude
intelligence appears. They have cunning rather than reason. They are
half akin to brute and half akin to man. A kind of selfish intelligence
characterizes their thinking. They lack a sense of proportion and
relation. Before the ant a man looms as large as a mountain before us.
An insect does not see things as they are but as they seem to it. Growth
in intelligence necessitates a truer appreciation of proportions and
relations. The pigmy also sees little but himself, but years and
experience leave behind them wisdom. The civilized races have all risen
from barbarism and savagery--that is, from a state of imperfect thinking
as well as of imperfect loving and choosing. Experience and culture
bring larger knowledge and a more equable balance of the faculties. No
man should be measured by his achievement in any one field of endeavor.
He may paint like Titian and be as voluptuous; he may write tragedies
like Shakespeare and have no logic; he may be a gatherer of facts like
Darwin and have no power of philosophic analysis. The intellect grows
steadily toward perfection of vision and logical strength, and also and
quite as significantly, toward harmony in the development of all the
powers of thought.

The contrast between the selfish cunning of an African pigmy and the
large and noble minds which are steadily multiplying, is a prophecy of
the man who will dwell on this earth when the vision is clear and the
power of rational judgment is perfected.

The prophecy of the soul is not less evident in the emotional nature. At
first the soul is either so imperfect, or so limited by the body, that
it seems to be nothing but a creature of emotions. It loves, but its
affections are selfish and egotistic. What may be called the epochs in
its growth are finely treated by Coleridge in "The Ancient Mariner" and
by Tennyson in "In M