680 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



away to-morrow, men would breed it afresh before to-morrow's to- 

 morrow by their errors, their excesses, their wrong-doings of all sorts. 

 Rightly, then, may the scientific inquirer echo the words of the 

 preacher, that however prosperous a man may have seemed in his life, 

 judge him not blessed before his death ; for he shall be known in his 

 children : they shall not have the confidence of their good descent. 

 In sober truth, the lessons of morality which were proclaimed by the 

 prophets of old, as indispensable to the stability and well-being of 

 families and nations, were not mere visions of vague fancy ; founded 

 upon actual observation and intuition of the laws of nature working 

 in human events, they were insights into the eternal truths of human 

 evolution. 



Whether, then, man goes upward or downward, undergoes devel- 

 opment or degeneration, we have equally to do with matters of stern 

 law. Provision has been made for both ways ; it has been left to him 

 to find out and determine which way he shall take. And it is plain 

 that he must find the right path of evolution, and avoid the wrong 

 path of degeneracy, by observation and experience, pursuing the same 

 method of positive inquiry which has served him so well in the differ- 

 ent sciences. Being preeminently and essentially a social being, each 

 one the member of one body the unit, that is, in the social organism 

 the laws which he has to observe and obey are not the physical laws 

 of nature only, but also those higher laws which govern the relations 

 of individuals in the social state. If he make his observations sincere- 

 ly and adequately in this way, he can not fail to perceive that the laws 

 of morality were not really miraculous revelations from heaven any 

 more than was the discovery of the law of gravitation, but that they 

 were essential conditions of social evolution, and were learned practi- 

 cally by the stern lessons of experience. He has learned his duty to 

 his neighbor as he has learned his duty to nature ; it is implicit in the 

 constitution of a complex society of men dwelling together in peace 

 and unity, and has been revealed explicitly by the intuition of a few 

 extraordinary men of sublime moral genius. 



As it is not a true, it can not be a useful, notion to foster that 

 morality was the special gift to man, and is the special property of 

 any theological system, and that its vitality is bound up essentially 

 with the life of any such creed. The golden rule of morals itself 

 " Do unto others as ye would have others do unto you " was per- 

 ceived and proclaimed long before it received its highest Christian ex- 

 pression.* It is not, indeed, religious creed which has invented and 

 been the basis of morality, but morality which has been the bulwark 



* There appears to be no doubt that Confucius, among others, had the clearest appre- 

 hension of it and expressly taught it ; and the Buddhist religion of perfection is certainly 

 founded upon self-conquest and self-sacrifice. They are its very corner-stone : the purifi- 

 cation of the mind from unholy desires and passions, and a devotion to the good of oth- 

 ers, which rises to an enthusiasm for humanity, in order to escape from the miseries of 



