COLLATERAL READINGS SUGGESTED. Spencer's First Principles, Principles of Psychology, and Principles of Ethics; Fiske's Cosmic Philosophy; Powell's Our Heredity from God; Bain's Mind and Body; Picton's The Mystery of Matter, and The Philosophy of Ignorance; Clifford's Body and Mind, Seeing and Thinking, and The Scientific Basis of Morals; Wake's Evolution of Morality; Lankester's Degeneration: A Chapter in Darwinism; Hinton's Life in Nature, and Mystery of Pain, Arabella Buckley's The Moral Teachings of Science; Huxley's Evolution and Ethics (Oxford Address). COSMIC EVOLUTION, AS RELATED ETHICS.* BY LEWIS G. JANES, Among the wonders of the beautiful White City by Lake Michigan, whither so many of us have made pilgrimages during these pleasant summer and autumn months, nothing is more instructive or suggestive to the thoughtful mind than the anthropological exhibit, so admirably and systematically arranged under the intelligent supervision of Professor Putnam. "Not things, but men," was the motto of the exhibition in its entirety, and of the Auxiliary Congresses, marshalled so successfully by President Bonney and his able corps of assistants; and here indeed, in the Anthropological Building, was a veritable history of man in the things which he had created. From the rude stone implements of a barbaric age, up to the time of polished stone and copper, and on again to the finest mechanisms of our own wonderful era, as we pass from the building especially dedicated to anthropological science to those larger evidences of human advancement in the vast temples of Agriculture, Machinery and the Liberal Arts, what a picture of evolution, what sublime testimony to man's achievements, what hope and promise for the future millennial expectations of mankind, did our marvelous Columbian Exposition—that great school of anthropology-afford! What wonder that this significant object-lesson embodied in the triumphs of science and art, so effectually demonstrating man's capacity for progress, so completely reversing the old theological dogma of the fall of man from an original state of human perfection, should take voice in the great Parliament of Religions in a pæan * Copyright 1893, by the BROOKLyn Ethical Association, of sympathy and human brotherhood transcending the boundaries of sect, overleaping the walls of dogmatic belief, merging Christian and Buddhist and Hindoo, Confucianist and Shintoist, Catholic and Protestant, Orthodox and Liberal into one church universal, of which the Art Institute constituted the Sacred Synagogue, the Columbian Exposition the Holy Temple, and its manifold exhibits the appropriate symbols and sacramental altars. It was my privilege to witness the impressive spectacle at the closing session of the Parliament. of Religions, when the Buddhist monk, clothed in the yellow robe of his order, the white robed and turbaned Hindoo and Shinto priests, the intellectual looking and richly clad follower of Confucius, sat side by side on the platform, fraternizing with the Greek bishop, the Roman Catholic doctor of divinity, and the sombre-garbed Protestant divines; while earnest-faced Susan B. Anthony, intellectual and whitehaired Julia Ward Howe, refined and elegant Mrs. Henrotin, representatives of America's noblest womanhood-and, sui generis, Joseph Cook, pompous of person and wrapped in a conceit of infallibility which overshadowed even that of the Roman Catholic potentates, completed the picturesque and cosmopolitan delegation. The enthusiasm of the vast audience when, one after another, the foreign delegates, whom we have been wont to define as "heathens,' arose and in cultivated and scholarly phrase uttered their final words of appreciation, counsel and admonition, the interest culminating when the Shinto priest invoked the blessing of the thirty million gods of Japan upon the American people, presented a scene such as the world never beheld before, and into the perfect harmony of which even the "Boston Lectureship," for the nonce, contributed no discordant word. As I felt the thrill of the popular uplift and enthusiasm, it seemed to me that here, in the closing decade of the Nineteenth Century, the ethical and humanitarian sentiment had touched high-water mark; and that the conceit of an has exclusive possession of saving truth by any sect, or ever, even by Christianity itself, could never again obtain credence among the people who witnessed the inspir-Yach sina This ex باشد. ing scene. Sober second thought, however, suggested There must be some common ground of rational A principle to substitute for the dogmatic foundations of sectarian segregation, which shall leave individuals free to formulate their own intellectual creeds while in a larger fellowship of the spirit they become helpers for the world's advancement. Can such a basis be found in ethics, as approached from the side of science and the doctrine of evolution? Can an ethical science be formulated in harmony with cosmic law,sufficiently rational and broad to command the allegiance of all Tiberal minded people? Can our little Association, with its cosmopolitan membership and free, scientific platform, offer a useful object-lesson in testimony to the utility and practicability of such a basis of spiritual fellowship? Manifestly this problem, which involves the entire question of man's relation to the Universe, and those laws and processes by means of which worlds have grown out of chaos, life out of inanimate nature, consciousness out of life, self-consciousness and moral responsibility out of the lower forms of sentience and conscious apprehension, admits of two modes of superficial interpretation. Ignoring the earlier stages of the evolutionary process and judging exclusively by its final and most exalted manifestations, we may unhesitatingly pronounce all things "very good" and find a possible common basis for ethical sanctions and religious reverence in the Universe itself and the majesty of its eternal order. Or, on the other hand, viewing the "martyrdom of man" at shorter range, as he has mounted with bloody feet to the heights of a civilization yet all too sadly imperfect when judged by the loftiest moral tests, we may question the beneficence of life, condemn the cosmo-poietic energy manifested in the evolution of the Universe as unmoral and careless of human good or ill, and seek for some Nirvana wherein the extinction of desire shall remove all motive for continuing the struggle for existence. |