bodies large enough to melt the lunar rocks over areas some tens of thousands of miles in diameter. These collisions took place at a very ancient time after the greater part, but not all, of the heat of that sphere had passed from it. There is no basis for a reckoning as to the time of occurrence of these accidents, but for the reason that the moon, through a relatively small sphere, still retained, at the time of these accidents, a share of its heat, it is reasonable to suppose that the earth had not yet cooled down to the point when organic life was established upon it. This would establish the time of the lunar falls as at least a hundred million years ago, perhaps very much more remote. The fall of large bodies on the moon, if it occurred, and the facts well warrant the supposition that it did, appears to have come about at or near the same time and, as we have noted, at a very remote period. If such then took place on the earth as a part of the same accident, it probably happened before our sphere had passed out of the universally molten state. Nothing that can be regarded as evidence of such a catastrophe has been found by geologists. If a record of it had been written on the solid globe, it would probably be evident to this day in a vast area of igneous rocks of a uniform nature such as apparently exist in the so-called lunar seas. Moreover, the demonstrated continuity of life on all the continents from an early stage of the earth's development is proof that the delicate adjustment of its temperature has not been disturbed. The fall of a celestial mass sufficient to have formed the lava of the smallest "sea" on the moon would inevitably have disturbed the organic order in a way that would appear in the geological record. Looking upon the problem of the earth's organic future in the light of its past, a method of inquiry by far the safest, for it involves no hypotheses whatever, we find great evidence that the conditions are such as to make a very long survival of the present conditions as certain as anything in this varied universe can be. We may assume that for a future, probably as long as the geologically recorded past, the sphere will go onward through time and space, free to work out its problems of life, with no break in the succession due to accidents coming from within or without. Here is a free field for much in the way of deeds. Whereto are they to lead and what is to be the end of it all? It is a great field of action and a fair one for speculations, though as yet but little explored. The most important element in the future of man is the extent to which he may be able to obtain control of the processes of his own body, those which determine health, longevity, and, above all, his inheritances. In the chapter on the rational control of the earth the probabilities of such accomplishment are considered and the conclusion reached that there are large possibilities of gain in all these regards. The question arises as to the directions in which the quality of life may be advanced through these accessions of capacity to shape it. In this field there is room for unlimited conjecture, but little to guide the process. There are, however, certain features of this future which appear to be fairly determinable, and, though they are shadowy, not without interest to those who would forecast the future of mankind. It is with a pleasure not without an alloy of regret that we may confidently look forward to men who are to look back on ourselves, as we to our ancestors of the bone and cave age not despisingly, as we look upon those troglodytes, for the man to come will have too large a sense of relations for that yet with a judgment that we were far back in the night when we thought we dwelt in the day. We may be sure that they will take us largely and tenderly, these folk of mayhap a million years hence, for they will feel the unity of life, while we merely discern it and that only in part. It is in this sense of the common bond of all life that those who are to look upon us from afar will have their greatest enlargement. Knowledge they will have beyond the conception of our time, as ours is beyond that of the lowest of our kind; but it is in the extension of the sympathies that our kind is to make its largest gains. By this our successors are at once to go far from us and to come nearer. In that field the gain may well be such as to make a new species, a new order of man, parted from us as we from the lower brutes, yet including our little lives in its vast extension. There are many signs that show us the present wonderful expansion of the economic part of civilization which, by its magnitude of material achievements, hides from us the more important changes and gains that are taking place in the higher realm of the sympathies. The first effect of this great modern movement was, in a measure, destructive to the emotional side of man that related to the so-called fine arts; we lost in part the ancient mode of expression of it through literature, sculpture, and painting. This loss seems to have been no more than the diversion of an ever-gathering stream into ways that led to an immediate rational sympathy with the fellow-man and the fellow-nature. In this field of action the only monuments are institutions and the states of mind they indicate. These show clearly that within the last four centuries, since we began to emerge from mediævalism, the gain in sympathy has, in the Aryan race, been greater than in all the previous stages of its advance. Other races, for obvious reasons, show less of this movement, but it is evidently a part of a series in which all the civilizable groups of men are to share, leading in the end to the completion of the evolution which began with the earliest organic form. We may fairly expect this sympathetic development of men along with the rational within a brief geologic time to bring our genus to an intellectual and spiritual control of life such as we can but faintly divine with our imagination. There is no reason to forecast the end of this new order until the sun goes out, or the under earth ceases to renew the theater of life. That, so far as we can reckon, may well be as remote in the future as the dawn of life is in the past. We seem to be in the middle of the term with the most of the great doing, and with that in the spiritual realm yet to be done. When the end comes, we may be sure that it will not be in the vile Schopenhauer way,- by the voluntary abandonment by man of his life as a thing of evil, — but by a cheerful surrender of it in the conviction that a great work is done, and that it is a fit part in an infinite accomplishment. We may ask ourselves as to the last steps in the time when the earth and sun begin to wane in their activities and to verge slowly to the end. Will those far-off men elect to keep up the battle to the imperative finish, contending with the degradation that comes from shrunken lands or scant heat, or will they in their wisdom choose to pass out in their nobler state? To this we can give no other answer save that those enlarged semblances of ourselves will make their judgment from a high station and dutifully, as we should in our happier estate. PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY, one of the most delightful of English poets. Born at Field Place, near Horsham, Sussex, August 4, 1792; drowned off the coast of Italy, July 8, 1822. Author of "Queen Mab: A Philosophic Poem," "Alastor, or the Spirit of Solitude, and Other Poems," "Rosalind and Helen: A Modern Eclogue," "The Cenci: A Tragedy," "The Masque of Anarchy," "The Sensitive Plant," "Julian and Maddalo," "Prometheus Unbound: A Lyrical Drama," "Adonais: An Elegy on the Death of John Keats," "The Witch of Atlas," and "Epipsychidion." No poet was ever endowed by nature with a mind of more exquisite delicacy of perception and appreciation than that of Shelley. Misunderstood and misrepresented in his brief lifetime, the world now knows how his whole soul was passionately thrilled with a desire to free mankind from tyranny and to increase the sum of human happiness. With years such faults as he possessed would probably have been softened into virtues; and when the waves closed over him, the world lost such a rare and lofty genius as has seldom visited this planet. Since Shelley's time no one, like him, has sung the "still, sad music of humanity," and none has soared in ecstasy at times so far above the earthly and material. Matthew Arnold well described Shelley as "A beautiful and ineffectual angel, beating in the void his luminous wings in vain." ADONAIS AN ELEGY ON THE DEATH OF JOHN KEATS I WEEP for Adonais - he is dead! Oh, weep for Adonais! though our tears Thaw not the frost which binds so dear a head! Forget the Past, his fate and fame shall be An echo and a light unto eternity! Where wert thou, mighty Mother, when he lay, When Adonais died? With veiled eyes, She sate, while one, with soft enamoured breath, With which, like flowers that mock the corse beneath, Oh, weep for Adonais - he is dead! Wake, melancholy Mother, wake and weep! Death feeds on his mute voice, and laughs at our despair. Most musical of mourners, weep again! Lament anew, Urania! He died, Who was the Sire of an immortal strain, Blind, old, and lonely, when his country's pride. The priest, the slave, and the liberticide Trampled and mocked with many a loathed rite Into the gulph of death; but his clear Sprite Most musical of mourners, weep anew! Not all to that bright station dared to climb; Which leads, through toil and hate, to Fame's serene abode. But now thy youngest, dearest one has perished, |