Future man will be heroic and divine, because he will live in an atmosphere of truth and right and God, and will be consciously inspired by these divine, omnipotent motives.

But who will compose this future race?  We cannot tell.  And yet the attempt to answer the question may open our eyes to truth of great practical importance.

It would seem to be a fact that the offspring of a cross between different races of the same species is as a rule more vigorous than that of either pure race.  Human history seems to show the same result.  The English race is a mixture of Celts, Anglo-Saxons, Danes, and Normans, with a sprinkling of other races.  And a new fusion of a great number of most diverse strains is rapidly going on in the newly populated portions of America and in Australia.  The mixture contains thus far almost purely occidental races.  It will in future almost certainly contain oriental also.  For the races of India, Japan, and even China, are no farther from us to-day than the ancestors of many of our occidental fellow-citizens were a century ago.  Racial prejudices, however strong, weaken rapidly through intercourse and better acquaintance.  One of the grandest and least perceived results of missionary work is the preparation for this great fusion.

Many races will undoubtedly go down before the advance of civilization and have no share in the future.  Progress seems to be limited to the inhabitants of temperate zones; and even here the weaker may be crowded out before the stronger rather than absorbed by them.  But many whom we now despise may have a larger inheritance in the future than we.  God is clearly showing us that we should not count any man, much less any nation, common or unclean.  And the laws of evolution give us a firm confidence that no good attained by any race or civilization will fail to be preserved in the future.

The forms which seem to us at any one time the highest are as a rule not the ancestors of the race of the future.  These highest forms are too much specialized, and thus fitted to a narrow range of space, time, and general conditions; when these change they pass away.  Specialization is doubly dangerous when it follows a wrong line.  But whenever it is carried far enough to lead to a one-sided development, it narrows the possibility of future advance; for it neglects or crowds out or prevents the development of other powers essential to life.  The mollusk neglected nerve and muscle.  But the scholar may, and often does, cultivate the brain at the expense of the rest of the body until he and his descendants suffer, and the family becomes extinct.