376 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



ness," asserts itself in a still more imposing manner. We have hith- 

 erto considered only the lives of individuals and of single generations, 

 but we must also regard the lives of peoples. It is manifest in this 

 collective life, in a vastly higher measure than in individual life, that 

 " the wages of sin is death." As Everett has remarked, again, one 

 society may favor the growth of righteousness and honor, another that 

 of knavery and hypocrisy. In one, drunkenness and sensuality, and 

 similar vices, may cause a man to sink to the lowest circles of society ; 

 in another, they may raise him till he reaches the highest. But here, 

 at last, we have a principle, to which these social conditions are them- 

 selves responsible. The one society will develop one type of charac- 

 ter, the other a different one ; but according to the type of character 

 which it favors will it stand or fall. In this we find in the facts of 

 history a confirmation of the fundamental difference between right 

 and wrong. What we call justice is the only enduring basis on which 

 society can rest. The nations that do wrong and despise justice, which 

 lose themselves in sensual intoxication, are at last broken up, and a 

 purer, stronger, and less depraved race takes their place. 



If the opinion comes to prevail in a society that the struggle for 

 existence justifies or demands a reckless pursuit of one's own interests, 

 the oppression and ruin of the weak by the strong, the destruction of 

 misery by destroying the miserable, the extirpation of the voice of 

 compassion, which protests within us against such a course ; if phys- 

 ical strength and refined cunning and selfishness are carefully cher- 

 ished as the highest ideal, then the days of that commonwealth are 

 numbered, for it has worked for its own dissolution by authorizing a 

 " strife of all against all," which, true to its precepts, may come in at 

 any moment when a community of interests may not be present. Let 

 periods of want and danger, or of war, ensue, and we shall see what 

 will be the fate of a society in which patriotism, devotion, ideal stand- 

 ards, and regard for truth and justice have been objects of ridicule. 



All positive human authorities are subject to the authority of life- 

 conditions. If they will not adapt themselves to the nature of things 

 when they deal with the bases of social life, their enterprises will at 

 last be shattered under the might of that authority. 



Two elements, according to Everett, have contributed more than 

 all else to the success of men in the conflict with animals, and of civil- 

 ized men in contending with barbarous. One of these elements is 

 knowledge, or the power of thought, the other is the force of the social 

 impulse. Ideas on the one side, a self -forgetting resignation on the 

 other, are what have given the victory to the higher races. Whatever 

 restricts the course of either mental or moral development strikes the 

 hardest possible blow against the stability of the social organism. 



The distinction between right and wrong, to use an expression of 

 John Fiske's, has its roots in the deepest foundations of the universe. 

 The cosraical power of natural selection is not against, but for, morals. 



