It is enough that from such beginnings, famine, disease and mutual slaughter, fit nurses of the future lords of creation, have gradually evolved, after infinite travail, a race with conscience enough to know it is vile, and intelligent enough to know it is insignificant. We survey the past, and see that its history is of blood and tears, of helpless blundering, of wild revolt, of stupid acquiescence, of empty aspirations. We sound the future, and learn that after a period, long compared with the individual life, but short indeed compared with the divisions of time open to our investigation, the energies of our system will decay, the glory of the sun will be dimmed, and the earth, tideless and inert, will no longer tolerate the race which has for a moment disturbed it solitude. Man will go down into the pit, and all his thoughts will perish. The uneasy consciousness, which in this obscure corner has for a brief space broken the contented silence of the universe, will be at rest. "Imperishible monuments" and immortal deeds, death itself and love stronger than death, will be as though they had never been. Nor will anything that is be better or worse for all that the labour, genius, devotion, and suffering of man have striven through countless ages to effect.
- A.J. Balfour Foundations of Belief |
