ded
by sex-life to the development of higher activities,--might not the
result be an eventual state of polymorphism, like that of ants? And, in
such event, might not the Coming Race be indeed represented in its
higher types,--through feminine rather than masculine evolution,--by a
majority of beings of neither sex?

Considering how many persons, even now, through merely unselfish (not
to speak of religious) motives, sentence themselves to celibacy, it
should not appear improbably that a more highly evolved humanity would
cheerfully sacrifice a large proportion of its sex-life for the common
weal, particular ly in view of certain advantages to be gained. Not the
least of such advantages--always supposing that mankind were able to
control sex-life after the natural manner of the ants--would be a
prodigious increase of longevity. The higher types of a humanity
superior to sex might be able to realize the dream of life for a
thousand years.

Already we find lives too short for the work we have to do; and with
the constantly accelerating progress of discovery, and the
never-ceasing expansion of knowledge, we shall certainly find more and
more reason to regret, as time goes on, the brevity of existence. That
Science will ever discover the Elixir of the Alchemists' hope is
extremely unlikely. The Cosmic Powers will not allow us to cheat them.
For every advantage which they yield us the full price must be paid:
nothing for nothing is the everlasting law. Perhaps the price of long
life will prove to be the price that the ants have paid for it.
Perhaps, upon some elder planet, that price has already been paid, and
the power to produce offspring restricted to a caste morphologically
differentiated, in unimaginable ways, from the rest of the species...

VII

But while the facts of insect-biology suggest so much in regard to the
future course of human evolution, do they not also suggest something of
largest significance concerning the relation of ethics to cosmic law?
Apparently, the highest evolution will not be permitted to creatures
capable of what human moral experience has in all areas condemned.
Apparently, the highest possible strength is the strength of
unselfishness; and power supreme never will be accorded to cruelty or
to lust. There may be no gods; but the forces that shape and dissolve
all forms of being would seem to be much more exacting than gods. To
prove a "dramatic tendency" in the ways of the stars is no