For a hundred generations it must hold absolutely true,
that everyone of that time who has issue living now is ancestral to all
of us. That brings the thing quite within the historical period. There
is not a western European palaeolithic or neolithic relic that is not a
family relic for every soul alive. The blood in our veins has handled
it.
And there is something more. We are all going to mingle our blood again.
We cannot keep ourselves apart; the worst enemies will some day come to
the Peace of Verona. All the Montagues and Capulets are doomed to
intermarry. A time will come in less than fifty generations when all the
population of the world will have my blood, and I and my worst enemy
will not be able to say which child is his or mine.
But you may retort--perhaps you may die childless. Then all the sooner
the whole species will get the little legacy of my personal achievement,
whatever it may be.
You see that from this point of view--which is for me the vividly true
and dominating point of view--our individualities, our nations and
states and races are but bubbles and clusters of foam upon the great
stream of the blood of the species, incidental experiments in the
growing knowledge and consciousness of the race.
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