This psychical development of Man is destined to go on in the future as it has gone on in the past.  The creative energy which has been at work through the bygone eternity is not going to become quiescent to-morrow.  We have learned something of its methods of working, and from the careful observation of the past we can foresee the future in some of its most general outlines.  From what has already gone on during the historic period of man’s existence, we can safely predict a change that will by and by distinguish him from all other creatures even more widely and more fundamentally than he is distinguished today.  Whenever in the course of organic evolution we see any function beginning as incidental to the performance of other functions, and continuing for many ages to increase in importance until it becomes an indispensable strand in the web of life, we may be sure that by a continuance of the same process its influence is destined to increase still more in the future.  Such has been the case with the function of sympathy, and with the ethical feelings which have grown up along with sympathy and depend largely upon it for their vitality.  Like everything else which especially distinguishes Man, the altruistic feelings were first called into existence through the first beginnings of infancy in the animal world.  Their rudimentary form was that of the transient affection of a female bird or mammal for its young.  First given a definite direction through the genesis of the primitive human family, the development of altruism has formed an important part of the progress of civilization, but as yet it has scarcely kept pace with the general development of intelligence.  There can be little doubt that in respect of justice and kindness the advance of civilized man has been less marked than in respect of quick-wittedness.  Now this is because the advancement of civilized man has been largely effected through fighting, through the continuance of that deadly struggle and competition which has been going on ever since organic life first appeared on the earth.  It is through such fierce and perpetual struggle that the higher forms of life have been gradually evolved by natural selection.  But we have already seen how in many respects the evolution of Man was the opening of an entirely new chapter in the history of the universe.  In no respect was it more so than in the genesis of the altruistic emotions.  For when natural selection, through the lengthening of childhood, had secured a determinate development for this class of human feelings, it had at last originated a power which could thrive only through the elimination of strife.  And the later history of mankind, during the past thirty centuries, has been characterized by the gradual eliminating of strife, though the process has gone on with the extreme slowness that marks all the work of evolution.  It is only at the present clay that, by surveying human history from the widest possible outlook, and with the aid of the habits of