n
almost a Darwinian way on that brain-futuring which entered into the
struggle for animal existence even with such enormous modifying power.
In our old days, under the sway of new scientific knowledge, we
instinctively saw man in the perspective of nature, and then man seemed
almost an after-thought of nature; but having been produced, late in her
material history, and gifted with foresight that distinguished him from
all else in her scheme, his own evolution gathered thereby that speed
which is so perplexing a contrast to the inconceivable slowness of the
orbing of stars and the building of continents. He has used his powers
of prescience for his own ends; but, fanciful as the thought is, might
it happen that through his control of elemental forces and his
acquaintance with infinite space, he should reach the point of applying
prescience in nature's own material frame, and wield the world for the
better accomplishment of her apparent ends,--that, though unimaginable
now, would constitute the true polarity to her blind and half-chaotic
motions,--chaotic in intelligence, I mean, and to the moral reason.
Unreal as such a thought is, a glimpse of some such feeling toward
nature is discernible in the work of some impressionist landscape
painters, who present colour and atmosphere and space without human
intention, as a kind of artistry of science, having the same sort of
elemental substance and interest that scientific truth has as an object
of knowledge,--a curious form of the beauty of truth."

We spoke of some illustrations of this, the scene before us lending
atmosphere and suggestion to the talk, and enforcing it like nature's
comment. "But," I continued, "what I had in mind to say was concerning
our dead selves. The old phrase, _life is a continual dying_, is true,
and, once gone life is death; and sometimes so much of it has been
gathered to the past, such definite portions of it are laid away, that
we can look, if we will, in the lake of memory on the faces of the dead
selves which once we were." Instinctively we looked on the mystic
glamour in the low valley, as on that Lake of the Dead Souls I spoke of.
I went on after the natural pause,--I could not help it,--"'I was a
different man, then,' we say, with a touch of sadness, perhaps, but
often with better thoughts, and always with a feeling of mystery. How
old is the youth before he is aware of the fading away of vitality out
of early beliefs? and then he feels th