How can I adequately express my contempt for the assertion that all things occur for the best, for a wise and beneficent end, and are ordered by a hu… - Richard Jefferies

United effort through geological time in front is but the beginning of an idea. I am convinced that much more can be done, and that the length of time may be almost immeasurably shortened. The general principles that are now in operation are of the simplest and most elementary character, yet they have already made considerable difference. I am not content with these. There must be much more—there must be things which are at present unknown by whose aid advance may be made. Research proceeds upon the same old lines and runs in the ancient grooves. Further, it is restricted by the ultra-practical views which are alone deemed reasonable. But there should be no limit placed on the mind. The purely ideal is as worthy of pursuit as the practical, and the mind is not to be pinned to dogmas of science any more than to dogmas of superstition. Most injurious of all is the continuous circling on the same path, and it is from this that I wish to free my mind.

The old men say their fathers told them that soon after the fields were left to themselves a change began to be visible.

I am obliged by facts and incontrovertible argument to conclude that death is not inevitable to the ideal man. He is shaped for a species of physical immortality. The beauty of form of the ideal human being indicates immortality—the contour, the curve, the outline answer to the idea of life. In the course of ages united effort long-continued may eliminate those causes of decay which have grown up in ages past, and after that has been done advance farther and improve the natural state. As a river brings down suspended particles of sand, and depositing them at its mouth forms a delta and a new country; as the air and the rain and the heat of the sun dessicate the rocks and slowly wear down mountains into sand, so the united action of the human race, continued through centuries, may build up the ideal man and woman. Each individual labouring in his day through geological time in front must produce an effect. The instance of Sparta, where so much was done in a few centuries, is almost proof of it.