The qualities of matter as we conceive them are thus conditioned upon and relative to the limited boundaries of our sense-perception. Light and color, hardness and weight, form and extension are mental concepts, showing us not what the external reality is in itself, but only what it is as related to our capacities of apprehension. But this is only one side of the shield-one aspect of the rounded globe of truth concerning the problem of existence. What we want is the whole truth-and nothing but the truth. On the other hand, we think no thought, we perceive no truth, we solve no problem of a mental character, save through the movement and tension, the wear and decay of physical atoms in the brain and nervous system; that which is a logical necessity of thought we are obliged to conceive as a reality transcending individual consciousness and inhering in the nature of the extra-sentient universe. No vision of beauty in landscape or human countenance gives rise in our souls to sentiments of joy and adoration, save through the pulsations of a physical æther. No musical harmony, however beatific, penetrates and enthralls the mind save as it is wafted on the physical waves of the atmosphere in accordant touch with the physical structure of the ear and brain. The new psychology finds its primary data in a scientific physiology. While it compels us to recognize the relative and symbolic. character of our sense perception, its inevitable logic also forces us to recognize the reality behind the symbols a reality constant and steadfast in its relations, independent of our volition, which compels our psychical nature to construct definite and unchangeable symbols for its interpretation. Materialist and idealist are thus alike baffled by the simplest facts of our every-day experiences, touching as they do at the ultimate depths of every problem, whether of physics, biology, psychology or ethics, a Reality external to the individual consciousness, well known or susceptible of scientific investigation in all its phenomenal relations thereto but unknown and unknowable to finite beings in its absolute and essential nature.

So intimate is the relation of concomitant mental and material phenomena, that it need not surprise us

when we discover certain obvious analogies between their laws and operations which are useful, instructive and infinitely suggestive to us in the higher regions of thought and investigation. Surely the likeness between those attractive forces of gravity and cohesion which bind atoms and worlds into a cosmic unity, and those sentiments of love and obligation which constitute the psychical attractions of man to man in the social organism, is so apparent that it compels instant recognition. And that wonderful equilibration of centrifugal and centripetal energies which holds suns and planets in orderly relation and propulsion, is paralleled by the sense of equity in the human mind which balances the claims of egoistic and altruistic obligation, demands rights for self, and recognizes corresponding duties toward others, and in its most perfect manifestation ultimates in the greatest possible fulness of life, in the individual and in society at large. May we not logically infer that these imperfectly understood but clearly evident analogies are indicative of a deeper unity than that which is directly. revealed to our finite faculties?

In the growth of worlds, the advent and development of life upon our planet, the progress from moneron to vertebrate, from fish to saurian, from lemur to ape, from ape to man; in the advancement of man from the lowest savagery to the highest civilization; in the unfolding of mind from its simplest manifestation in the unicellular organism up to the triumphs of a Shakespeare, an Olmsted, a Beethoven or a Spencer, we may trace the operation of one primary and consistent principle or law of evolution. In the clash of atoms in the primeval nebulæ, the contests of life in the plant and animal world, the age-long competitive strifes of man with man-at first on the purely physical plane, then with the sharper weapons of wit and cunning, finally in the loftier and yet keener competition for moral supremacy-we see everywhere the "struggle for existence," ultimating in the survival of that which is best adapted to existing physical, social and intellectual conditions. We see through all these developmental processes, the triumph of law, every Present the child of the immediate and remoter

Past, effect always answering to cause; Nature everywhere efficient and sufficient to accomplish the observed results; no evidence of supernatural intrusion anywhere; no "First Cause" in a series having a beginning in time, but a never-ending, never commencing immanent and efficient Cause: -the sole miracle, the always existent, ever-potent, self-revealing in its re-lational aspects, but ultimately incomprehensible Reality.

The

We see the principle of order in the intercourse of atoms and whirl of worlds rising to life in plant and flower, to sentience in the brute creation, to selfconsciousness and moral supremacy in man. Everywhere disorder, dislocation from the inherent and eternal principles on which the process of evolution is conducted, has meant disintegration, decay, dissolution. Everywhere unity with and obedience of these principles has meant survival and advancement. impulse to self-preservation, relatively weak in the lower organisms, becomes stronger in the higher, instinctive in most vertebrates, and of the greatest importance in the life of man, where for the first time intelligent volition seeks to create ethical instincts which shall aid in its triumph over the manifold difficulties of life. In gregarious creatures this primary impulse impels a recognition of kinship in the herd or flock or related colony, and the obligation to

serve

one's self broadens into the obligation to serve the local commonwealth. Here, indeed, is the germ of conscience and ethical obligation, reaching its roots. down into the sub-stratum of order in the physical universe out of which it has sprung and to which it is vitally and genetically related.

With an excusable assumption based on an obvious analogy, we may say that a colony of ants, a herd of cattle, a flock of migratory birds, has developed a morality of its own. In the evolution of language, certain words have been exalted above their original signification, while others have suffered degeneration, decay, and degradation of meaning. The word "moral" which at first meant merely or adapted to the existing mean conformity to an ideal

that which is customary social order, has come to standard of right, often

far removed from the immediate conventions of society; thus adding the testimony of philology to the ethical advancement of the race. In its present use it implies a supreme act of volition in obligation to ideal ends. It is only by reverting to its primitive signification, however, that we can properly speak of a moral order among animals; since their action is instinctive rather than volitional, or volitional in the sense of striving for social ends only because they are seen to promote individual safety and happiness. With no necessity for assumption, however, seeing the relations of cause and effect which link the noblest human character to the principle of order in the inorganic universe, by insensible gradations, through animal instincts and egoistic efforts for selfpreservation, we may say that this is in very truth a Moral Universe, quivering with ethical impulse and purposive moral life in every atom. The moral in man is a supreme fact, independent of all theories of free or determined choice, of intuitional or experiential origin. The final product of the long evolutionary travail, it is an ethical justification of the entire process which lies behind it. But in a stricter sense and in its purely human relations, we can only call that impulse moral which dissociates the sense of ob ligation from all conscious striving for egoistic happiness, and substitutes for this primary motive the secondary representative and altruistic motive of obedience to a law of morals, conditioned upon the nature of things, and conditioning the progressive stability of human societies; which has thus been found essential to the highest welfare and happiness of mankind. The discovery of such an abstract law appears to be the exclusive province of the developed human intellect, though the germs of abstraction may doubtless be found in memory and the association of ideas in the lower animals.

In a moral action, the conscious object of pursuit. as indicated by an ethical science based on the doctrine of evolution can never be mere egoistic pleasure, but fullness of life, not only for self and family, but for society at large, including the life of posterity. To this end, if necessary, one must always be ready

to sacrifice individual happiness, immediate or remote. While it is true on the one hand, therefore, that conventional and perfunctory actions, like those regulating the social relations of brutes and savages, however beneficent in their results, can not be regarded as in the highest sense moral, it is also true that the intuitive sense of obligation, however powerful, is equally defective as an ultimate moral test.

The true tests of ethical action are both objective and subjective; either one alone is illusory and unsatisfactory. Unless rightly guided by an adequate intellectual apprehension of the results of the volitional activities, such an intuitive sense of obligation may be a most serious obstruction to human welfare and advancement-a fire-brand at the domestic altar, inquisition for the heretic, destruction to enemy or unbeliever. The consciences of the Joshuas, John Calvins and Joseph Cooks of history, recent or remote, like those of the domestic Bluebeards, and those eccentric minds which we term "cranks," warped and distorted by false intellectual apprehensions of duty, offer some of the most serious problems in rational psychology and ethics. In such minds the sense of duty may be absolutely supreme and unyielding; but the hardest rock does not constitute the most useful building material, nor does it become the most fruitful soil under the slow attrition of the elements. Its unyielding nature dooms it to stand in lonely isolation, a monumental reminder of a primeval stage of evolutionary progress which the living world has long since left behind. An exalted sense of obligation must be combined with a certain plasticity of the intellectual nature, freedom from dogmatism and willingness to seek and learn, to constitute the highest ethical attainment.

Taking the process of evolution in its more general aspects, it is perhaps not difficult to maintain an optimistic attitude toward the Power that has raised the animate world out of the inanimate, and moral man from the unmoral brute creation. But when we view the process in detail, especially as it affects sentient organisms, certain problems are presented which challenge our most thoughtful consideration. The evolu