But you may retort--perhaps you may die childless. Then all the sooner
the whole species will get the little legacy of my personal achievement,
whatever it may be.

You see that from this point of view--which is for me the vividly true
and dominating point of view--our individualities, our nations and
states and races are but bubbles and clusters of foam upon the great
stream of the blood of the species, incidental experiments in the
growing knowledge and consciousness of the race.

I think this real solidarity of humanity is a fact that is only slowly
being apprehended, that it is an idea that we who have come to realize
it have to assist in thinking into the collective mind. I believe the
species is still as a whole unawakened, still sunken in the delusion of
the permanent separateness of the individual and of races and nations,
that so it turns upon itself and frets against itself and fails to see
the stupendous possibilities of deliberate self-development that lie
open to it now.

I see myself in life as part of a great physical being that strains and
I believe grows towards beauty, and of a great mental being that strains
and I believe grows towards knowledge and power. In this persuasion that
I am a gatherer of experience, a mere tentacle that arranges thought
beside thought for this being of the species, this being that grows
beautiful and powerful, in this persuasion I find the ruling idea of
which I stand in need, the ruling idea that reconciles and adjudicates
among my warring motives. In it I find both concentration of myself and
escape from myself; in a word, I find Salvation.