326 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



that fill the mind with awe, as in the familiar phrase of Kant, but 

 one thing, whether it be manifested in the order of the galaxies 

 or in the orderly impulse to right action which we term con- 

 science or duty." * That principle of gravitation which secures 

 order among whirling atoms and orbs throughout the inter- 

 stellar spaces finds its complete analogue in human societies in 

 the sense of moral obligation. Here is no mere transcendental 

 speculation, but a logical deduction from scientifically demon- 

 strated facts. What is that very inviolability of law which is 

 the stumbling-block of crude, sentimental thinkers on the prob- 

 lems of man's relation to the universe but an ex^jression of stead- 

 fastness and honesty in Nature's dealings with us ? How much 

 better is it than the capricious Providence of the theologian ! 



Undoubtedly there was a distinct progress in morals, as Prof. 

 Huxley declares, when action from right motive came to be re- 

 garded as the true moral test, in the place of acts conventionally 

 estimated as right, when judged by their results, according to 

 standards established by the dictum of political or ecclesiastical 

 authority. But the reaction has been too great ; ethical teachers 

 have come to place the entire stress on the motive, ignoring the 

 actual objective results of individual activities. The new science 

 of ethics, which is dominated by the doctrine of evolution, finds 

 an objective law of right, inherent in the nature of things, domi- 

 nating all human associations, and makes conformity to this law, 

 both in motive and in action, the highest moral ultimatum. The 

 Quaker doctrine of the "inner light" and the transcendental 

 theory of intuitional ethics need to be supplemented and cor- 

 rected by the lessons of science and experience. Mr. Spencer has 

 ably shown that individual intuition is born out of race experi- 

 ence, and that ethical theories hitherto regarded as irreconcilably 

 antagonistic are harmonized by the solvent method of evolution. 

 So, also, his much-misunderstood doctrine of the Unknowable sup- 

 plements the Berkeleian idealism and Buddhistic nihilism which 

 Prof. Huxley seems to regard as the highest logical resultants of 

 human speculation ; and by showing the absurdity and unthink- 

 ableness of the conception of a sequence of phenomena, either 

 mental or material, without a nexus of reality, and scientifically 

 demonstrating the symbolical character of our sense-perceptions, 

 he has dealt a deathblow to the old-fashioned materialism and 

 substituted for the metaphysical conception of a substance 

 apart from phenomena at best a fruitless abstraction the 

 strictly logical, affirmative, and scientific conception of a reality 

 immanent in all phenomena, inconceivable, indeed, in its essen- 

 tial nature, because of the limitations of our knowing faculties, 



* The Evolution of Morals. 



