tion of life, from the lower to the higher organisms, is accompanied by an ever increasing differentiation of structure and function, finally culminating in highly developed brains and nervous systems of steadily augmenting refinement and complexity of organization. This physical advancement is accompanied by a corresponding differentiation and integration of sentient capacity, so that a much wider and more definite range of sense impressions is open to man and the higher animals than that of which the lower forms of sentient life are susceptible.

The struggle for existence which in inanimate nature and probably in vegetal organisms is unaccompanied by conscious apprehension, is reported to the unitary sensorium in the brain through the intricate network of nerve-fibres in man and the higher animals, and eventuates in conscious feelings of pleasure or of pain. The problem of pain and suffering in sentient creatures appears to some minds insoluble in accordance with the conception of beneficence at the heart of the cosmic process. In his recent Romanes address at Oxford, Professor Huxley, one of the most virile and versatile thinkers among the modern scientific apostles of evolution-an honored friend and Corresponding Member of this Association-takes the ground that all evolution is cyclical in its character-the alternation of growth and decay, of progress and degeneration, without any obvious intelligible or benenfient end or tendency. No moral character, therefore, he claims, is predicable of the cosmic process. On the contrary, all ethical progress has been achieved "not by imitating the cosmic process, still less by running away from it, but by combating it."

"From

That I may do Professor Huxley no injustice, I will quote somewhat at length from his lecture. the very low forms up to the highest," he declares, "in the animal no less than the vegetable kingdom— the process of life presents the same appearance of cyclical evolution. Nay, we have but to cast our eye over the rest of the world and cyclical change presents itself on every side. It meets us in the water that flows to the sea and returns to the springs; in the heavenly bodies that wax and wane, go and return

to their places; in the inexorable sequence of the ages of man's life; in the successive rise, apogee and fall of dynasties and of States which is the most prominent topic of civil history. But there is another aspect of the cosmic process, so perfect as a mechanism, so beautiful as a work of art. Where the cosmo-poietic energy works through sentient beings, there arises, among its other manifestations, that which we call pain or suffering. This baleful product of evolution. increases in quantity and in intensity, with advancing grades of animal organization, until it attains its highest level in man. Further, the consummation is not reached in man, the mere animal; nor in man, the wholly or half savage; but only in man, the member of an organized polity; and it is a necessary accompaniment of his attempt to live in this way—that is, under these conditions, which are essential to the development of his noblest powers."

After a brief sketch of ethical theories as enunciated in Buddhism and the Greek philosophies, in the course of which he incidentally affirms that "Cosmic Nature is no school of virtue, but the headquarters of the enemy of the ethical nature," and that "the cosmos works, through the lower nature of man, not for righteousness, but against it," he enters upon a criticism of modern theories, practically denying that any ethical system can logically be based upon the doctrine of evolution, and further emphasizing his position by the remarkable statement that "Cosmic evolution may teach us how the good and evil tendencies in man may have come about; but, in itself, it is incompetent to furnish any better reason why what we call good is preferable to what we call evil than we had before.' He alludes to processes of degeneration as in conflict with the conception of an ethical aspect or tendency in cosmic Nature, and adds: "As I have already urged, the practice of that which is ethically bestwhat we call goodness or virtue-involves a course of conduct which, in all respects, is opposed to that which leads to success in the cosmic struggle for existence. Its influence is directed, not so much to the survival of the fittest, as to the fitting of as many as possible to survive."

Leaving out the remainder of his lecture, which is chiefly devoted to a much needed emphasizing of the importance of the human will in moral evolution, and with the general purport of which I heartily agree, let us consider whether Professor Huxley's indictment against the ethics of evolution must be permitted to stand unchallenged. And first, let us ask by what authority, as an evolutionist, does he tacitly and avowedly accept the old theological conception of an antithetical and antagonistic relationship between man and the Universe out of which he has sprung? If man's ethical nature is not a product of the cosmic process as certainly as his purely physical nature, whence does it come? By what means can man correct the methods by which the cosmic energy works in the lower plane of vital activities, without using the powers which he has inherited from these very struggles for existence? As an evolutionist, Professor Huxley can hardly fall back upon the scientifically obsolete doctrines of special creation and a supernaturally intruded grace, and herein would seem to be his only refuge from the conclusion which he so persistently ignores. If, as he affirms, "the cosmic process has no sort of relation to moral ends," how does it happen that the moral sense is itself the culminating product of all evolution, the fine Man-child of all the centuries, toward whose advent the long struggle for existence. has constituted the natal throes?

Nor can we admit what seems to be implied in the whole tenor of Professor Huxley's address, that the physical nature of man is, per se, a lower or evil nature, or in necessary conflict with the moral ends of his being. Rightly used, every function of our complex human nature works for good and is the helper of moral ends. Abused, any, even the highest, may be productive of evil. The masterfulness of "the cosmic nature which is born in us," the inheritance from brute conditions, is the necessary and powerful instrument in ethical advancement as well as in the physical conflicts of life; and that conventional morality which is the outcome of a mere deficiency of physical power and capacity is surely a condition not of positive, manly virtue, but of puerile and ascetic weakness, in

dicative of mental as well as bodily defect. The conflict with evil to which the Oxford address, as a whole, is a trumpet call, can never be waged successfully without those very weapons which have been forged in the fiery furnace of the age-long cosmic struggle. He who does not conceive of the ethical life as a conflict demanding every resource of manly energy, must either live the life of an ascetic, withdrawn from the world and its temptations, or be lapped in circumstances that favor his continuance in the innocence of childhood

"A powerless, pulpy soul,

Showing a dimple at the touch of sin."

By what curious bias, moreover, has Professor Huxley been induced to debit Nature with all the pain and suffering which enter into the experience of sentient beings, and to fail to credit her with the manifold pleasures and satisfactions which are equally the product of the cosmic process? It is man in his entirety who is the child of the great World-Mother, and his virtues as well as his weaknesses and vices, his enjoyments as well his pains and sufferings, are a part of his cosmic heritage. Nor can it be denied, I think, that a progressively unfolding and enlarging life implies a constant surplus of satisfactions over the concomitant sufferings. To conceive otherwise, as Mr. Spencer has ably shown, would bring the theory to a reductio ad absurdum so complete as to be unanswerable. Pain and suffering are usually indicative of some want of adaptation to the physical, social or moral environment of the individual, and as such their function may be and should be educational; if not always and effectively to the individual, at least to the community and the race. And their educational effectiveness for the individual depends mainly upon that very capacity for sympathy which can only grow out of experience in and observation of their effects. It does not appear to me to be either a manly, a rational or a philosophical attitude to expect or desire a life of enjoyment from which all suffering is eliminated. We must take the shadows with the light. Were either lacking, the picture of a progressive moral life would

be incomplete-nay, it would be an impossibility. As Professor Huxley well says, "We are grown men, and must play the man

'Strong in will

To strive, to seek, to find and not to yield,'

cherishing the good that falls in our way, and bearing the evil, in and around us, with stout hearts set on diminishing it." But as we mount, step by step, up the "stairway of surprise" that leads to loftier heights of manly living, the relative good of the lower stage often becomes evil in the clearer air and wider view which opens before us, and the conflict must needs go on to yet higher ends. The clear perception of this fact must at once fashion our rational ideals of life, and urge us forward to their attainment. Those Oriental philosophies, which Professor Huxley seems to deem the highest products of human speculation, with their doctrines of cyclical change and of metempsychosis-of successive lives of desire and effort finally seen to be fruitless, ending in the search for Nirvana, the extinction of desire and endeavor-can offer no rational ideal to the modern scientific thinker. To him it is evident that something more than a mere cyclical alternation of growth and decay is indicated by the only processes of evolution which he is permitted clearly to study those thus far exemplified on our planet and in our human lives. Differentiation, refinement, progress toward a higher individuality, has been so far, and in the long run, the actual result of the cosmic process. From a formless gas to a solid globe; from the theatre of fierce plutonic activities to a condition where such activities are rare and exceptional; from an inanimate mass to a home for manifold forms of life; from coarser to finer forms of vegetation; from moneron to ape and from ape to man; from savagery to barbarism and from barbarism to civilization: this has been the life history of our little world-the sole object-lesson from which we have the right to judge of the actual nature and tendency of cosmic evolution. Here is the large fact of progress, which is by no means reversed or seriously discounted by the incidental fact that this progress has not been serial, but rhythmical, that occasional and local degeneration has