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"Bone of our bone, and flesh of our flesh, are these half-brutish
prehistoric brothers. Girdled about with the immense darkness of this
mysterious universe even as we are, they were born and died, suffered
and struggled. Given over to fearful crime and passion, plunged in
the blackest ignorance, preyed upon by hideous and grotesque delusions,
yet steadfastly serving the profoundest of ideals in their fixed faith
that existence in any form is better than non-existence, they ever
rescued triumphantly from the jaws of ever-imminent destruction the
torch of life which, thanks to them, now lights the world for us. How
small, indeed, seem individual distinctions when we look back on these
overwhelming numbers of human beings panting and straining under the
pressure of that vital want! And how inessential in the eyes of God
must be the small surplus of the individual's merit, swamped as it
is in the vast ocean of the common merit of mankind, dumbly and
undauntedly doing the fundamental duty, and living the heroic life!
We grow humble and reverent as we contemplate the prodigious
spectacle."

WILLIAM JAMES, in _Human Immortality_.




ANTHROPOLOGY