they can ever learn to build on something better than dogma, they may
not be found saying, discouragedly, every once in so often, that every
civilization carries in it the seeds of decay. It will carry such
seeds with great certainty, though, when they're put there, by the
very race, too, that will later deplore the results. Why shouldn't
creeds totter when they are jerry-built creeds?

On stars where creeds come late in the life of a race; where they
spring from the riper, not cruder, reactions of spirit; where they
grow out of nobly developed psychic powers that have put their
possessors in tune with cosmic music; and where no cheap hallucinations
discredit their truths; they perhaps run a finer, more beautiful course
than the simians', and open the eyes of the soul to far loftier visions.



XIX


It has always been a serious matter for men when a civilization
decayed. But it may at some future day prove far more serious
still. Our hold on the planet is not absolute. Our descendants
may lose it.

Germs may do them out of it. A chestnut fungus springs up, defies
us, and kills all our chestnuts. The boll weevil very nearly baffles
us. The fly seems unconquerable. Only a strong civilization,
when such foes are about, can preserve us. And our present efforts
to cope with such beings are fumbling and slow.