“And modern civilisation?”
“Ah, we have other weapons. When we have degenerated, as we must eventually degenerate, when we have lost our intrinsic superiority, and other races, according to the natural law, advance to take our place, we shall fall back upon these weapons. Our morals will be gone, but our Maxims will remain. The effete and trembling European will sweep from the earth by scientific machinery the valiant savages who assail him.”
“Is that the triumph of moral superiority?”
“At first it would be, for the virtues of civilisation are of a higher type than those of barbarism. Kindness is better than courage, and charity more than strength. But ultimately the dominant race will degenerate, and as there will be none to take its place, the degeneration must continue. It is the old struggle between vitality and decay, between energy and indolence; a struggle that always ends in silence. After all, we could not expect human developement to be constant. It is only a question of time before the planet becomes unfitted to support life on its surface.”
“But you said that fitness must ultimately triumph.”
“Over relative unfitness, yes. But decay will involve all, victors and vanquished. The fire of life will die out, the spirit of vitality become extinct.”
“In this world perhaps.”
“In every world. All the universe is cooling—dying, that is—and as it cools, life for a spell becomes possible on the surface of its spheres, and plays strange antics. And then the end comes; the universe dies and is sepulchred in the cold darkness of ultimate negation.”
“To what purpose then are all our efforts?”
“God knows,” said Savrola cynically; “but I can imagine that the drama would not be an uninteresting one to watch.”
“And yet you believe in an ultra-human foundation, an eternal ideal for such things as beauty and virtue.”
“I believe that the superiority of fitness over relative unfitness is one of the great laws of matter. I include all kinds of fitness—moral, physical, mathematical.”
“Mathematical!”
“Certainly; words only exist by conforming to correct mathematical principles. That is one of the great proofs we have that mathematics have been discovered, not invented. The planets observe a regular progression in their distances from the sun. Evolution suggests that those that did not observe such principles were destroyed by collisions and amalgamated with others. It is a universal survival of the fittest.” She was silent. He continued: “Now let us say that in the beginning there existed two factors, matter animated by the will to live, and the eternal ideal; the great author and the great critic. It is to the interplay and counteraction of these two that all developement, that all forms of life are due. The more the expression of the will to live approximates to the eternal standard of fitness, the better it succeeds.”
“I would add a third,” she said; “a great Being to instil into all forms of life the desire to attain to the ideal; to teach them in what ways they may succeed.”
“It is pleasant,” he replied, “to think that such a Being exists to approve our victories, to cheer our struggles, and to light our way; but it is not scientifically or logically necessary to assume one after the two factors I have spoken of are once at work.”
“Surely the knowledge that such an ultra-human ideal existed must have been given from without.”
“No; that instinct which we call conscience was derived as all other knowledge from experience.”
“How could it be?”
“I think of it in this way. When the human race was emerging from the darkness of its origin and half animal, half human creatures trod the earth, there was no idea of justice, honesty, or virtue, only the motive power which we may call the ‘will to live.’ Then perhaps it was a minor peculiarity of some of these early ancestors of man to combine in twos and threes for their mutual protection. The first alliance was made; the combinations prospered where the isolated individuals failed. The faculty of combination appeared to be an element of fitness. By natural selection only the combinations survived. Thus man became a social animal. Gradually the little societies became larger ones. From families to tribes, and from tribes to nations the species advanced, always finding that the better they combined, the better they succeeded. Now on what did this system of alliance depend? It depended on the members keeping faith with each other, on the practice of honesty, justice, and the rest of the virtues. Only those beings in whom such faculties were present were able to combine, and thus only the relatively honest men were preserved. The process repeated itself countless times during untold ages. At every step the race advanced, and at every step the realisation of the cause increased. Honesty and justice are bound up in our compositions and form an inseparable part of our natures. It is only with difficulty that we repress such awkward inclinations.”
“You do not then believe in God?”
“I never said that,” said Savrola. “I am only discussing the question of our existence from one standpoint, that of reason. There are many who think that reason and faith, science and religion, must be everlastingly separated, and that if one be admitted the other must be denied. Perhaps it is because we see so short a span, that we think that their lines are parallel and never touch each other. I always cherish the hope that somewhere in the perspective of the future there may be a vanishing point where all lines of human aspiration will ultimately meet.”
“And you believe all this that you have said?”
“No,” he answered, “there is no faith in disbelief, whatever the poets have said. Before we can solve the problems of existence we must establish the fact that we exist at all. It is a strange riddle, is it not?”
“We shall learn the answer when we die.”
“If I thought that,” said Savrola, “I should kill myself tonight out of irresistible curiosity.”
He paused,
