Poets and physiologists agree in these prognostications. The keen observer, Bastian, in his treatise on archebiosis, willingly calls to his support an equally conscientious ally, in the following passage:—
“We must battle on along the path of knowledge and of duty, trusting in that natural progress towards a far distant future for the human race, such as its past history may warrant us in anticipating. For, as Mr. Wallace points out, those natural influences which have hitherto promoted man’s progress ‘still acting on his mental organisation, must ever lead to the more perfect adaptation of man’s higher faculties to the conditions of surrounding nature and to the exigencies of the social state,’ so that ‘his mental constitution may continue to advance and improve, till the world is again inhabited by a single, nearly homogeneous race, no individual of which will be inferior to the noblest specimens of existing humanity.’”—Dr. H. Charlton Bastian (“The Beginnings of Life,” Vol. II., p. 633).
3.—“Those lives allied in equal union chaste.”
“The great chastity of paternity, to match the great chastity of maternity.”
—Walt Whitman (“Children of Adam”).
4.—“A sweeter purpose, purer rapture, taste;”
“A wife is no longer the husband’s property; and, according to modern ideas, marriage is, or should be, a contract on the footing of perfect equality between the sexes. The history of human marriage is the history of a relation in which women have been gradually triumphing over the passions, the prejudices, and the selfish interests of men.”—Edward Westermarck (Concluding words of “The History of Human Marriage”).
7.—“The only rivalry ...”
“When woman finds her proper place in legislation, it will be found ultimately that it will be not as man’s rival, but his helpmate.”—Mabel Collins (“On Woman’s Relation to the State”).
8.—“How for their lineage fair still larger fate to find.”