The Human Drift | Page 7

quantity, it would seem that
the change in the distribution of Matter which Motion effects, coming
to a limit in whichever direction it is carried, the indestructible Motion
thereupon necessitates a reverse distribution. Apparently, the
universally-co-existent forces of attraction and repulsion, which, as we
have seen, necessitate rhythm in all minor changes throughout the
Universe, also necessitate rhythm in the totality of its changes--produce
now an immeasurable period during which the attractive forces
predominating, cause universal concentration, and then an
immeasurable period during which the repulsive forces predominating,
cause universal diffusion--alternate eras of Evolution and Dissolution.
AND THUS THERE IS SUGGESTED THE CONCEPTION OF A
PAST DURING WHICH THERE HAVE BEEN SUCCESSIVE
EVOLUTIONS ANALOGOUS TO THAT WHICH IS NOW GOING
ON; A FUTURE DURING WHICH SUCCESSIVE OTHER
EVOLUTIONS MAY GO ON--EVER THE SAME IN PRINCIPLE
BUT NEVER THE SAME IN CONCRETE RESULT."
That is it--the most we know--alternate eras of evolution and
dissolution. In the past there have been other evolutions similar to that
one in which we live, and in the future there may be other similar
evolutions--that is all. The principle of all these evolutions remains, but
the concrete results are never twice alike. Man was not; he was; and
again he will not be. In eternity which is beyond our comprehension,
the particular evolution of that solar satellite we call the "Earth"
occupied but a slight fraction of time. And of that fraction of time man
occupies but a small portion. All the whole human drift, from the first
ape-man to the last savant, is but a phantom, a flash of light and a
flutter of movement across the infinite face of the starry night.
When the thermometer drops, man ceases--with all his lusts and
wrestlings and achievements; with all his race-adventures and
race-tragedies; and with all his red killings, billions upon billions of
human lives multiplied by as many billions more. This is the last word
of Science, unless there be some further, unguessed word which
Science will some day find and utter. In the meantime it sees no farther
than the starry void, where the "fleeting systems lapse like foam." Of

what ledger-account is the tiny life of man in a vastness where stars
snuff out like candles and great suns blaze for a time-tick of eternity
and are gone?
And for us who live, no worse can happen than has happened to the
earliest drifts of man, marked to-day by ruined cities of forgotten
civilisation--ruined cities, which, on excavation, are found to rest on
ruins of earlier cities, city upon city, and fourteen cities, down to a
stratum where, still earlier, wandering herdsmen drove their flocks, and
where, even preceding them, wild hunters chased their prey long after
the cave-man and the man of the squatting-place cracked the
knuckle-bones of wild animals and vanished from the earth. There is
nothing terrible about it. With Richard Hovey, when he faced his death,
we can say: "Behold! I have lived!" And with another and greater one,
we can lay ourselves down with a will. The one drop of living, the one
taste of being, has been good; and perhaps our greatest achievement
will be that we dreamed immortality, even though we failed to realise
it.

SMALL-BOAT SAILING

A sailor is born, not made. And by "sailor" is meant, not the average
efficient and hopeless creature who is found to-day in the forecastle of
deepwater ships, but the man who will take a fabric compounded of
wood and iron and rope and canvas and compel it to obey his will on
the surface of the sea. Barring captains and mates of big ships, the
small-boat sailor is the real sailor. He knows--he must know--how to
make the wind carry his craft from one given point to another given
point. He must know about tides and rips and eddies, bar and channel
markings, and day and night signals; he must be wise in weather-lore;
and he must be sympathetically familiar with the peculiar qualities of
his boat which differentiate it from every other boat that was ever built
and rigged. He must know how to gentle her about, as one instance of a
myriad, and to fill her on the other tack without deadening her way or
allowing her to fall off too far.

The deepwater sailor of to-day needs know none of these things. And
he doesn't. He pulls and hauls as he is ordered, swabs decks, washes
paint, and chips iron-rust. He knows nothing, and cares less. Put him in
a small boat and he is helpless. He will cut an even better figure on the
hurricane deck of a horse.
I shall never forget my child-astonishment when I first encountered one
of these strange beings. He was a runaway English sailor. I was a lad