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Nesting beyond the grave in others’ hearts.

—I turn the handle: other men like me

Have made the film: and now I sit and look

In quiet, privileged like Divinity

To read the roaring world as in a book.

If this thy past, where shall thy future climb,

O Spirit, built of Elements and Time!

Munich, Jan. 1923.

PROGRESS, BIOLOGICAL AND OTHER

“Usus et impigrae simul experientia mentis

Paulatim docuit pedetemtim progredientes.”

—Lucretius.

“As natural selection works solely by and for the good of each being, all corporeal and mental environments will tend to progress towards perfection.”

—Charles Darwin.

“Social progress means the checking of the cosmic process at every step and the substitution for it of another which may be called the ethical process.”

—T. H. Huxley.

“It is probable that what hindered Kant from broaching his theory of progress with as much confidence as Condorcet was his perception that nothing could be decisively affirmed about the course of civilization until the laws of its movement had been discovered. He saw that this was a matter for future scientific investigation.”