52 6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



tion of tilings, and especially of society, if it were to continue to exist. 

 Men come to think that they have no business wantonly to destroy any- 

 thing, not even an insect or an inanimate object. Yet if they do it at 

 all, they answer that it was because it was " useless." It is thus by 

 tracing ideas apparently dissimilar to the same root that we obtain the 

 strongest possible confirmation of the truth of our contention. 



It was thus, then, that men began to form to themselves moral 

 ideas, having an absolute and universal existence as opposed to the 

 mere passing dicta of laws and opinions. In the special case before us 

 the inference ran thus : " If it is not right for me to kill, then all killing 

 is naturally wrong, necessary exceptions notwithstanding." And thus 

 the ideal was formed of the sanctity of human life, and society was re- 

 garded only as a means for this end, all its arrangements and institu- 

 tions being of necessity submitted to the moral judgment of the indi- 

 vidual mind, and approved only so far as they came up to the ideal. It 

 must, indeed, be confessed that there are survivals from earlier stages 

 of moral growth which cast a strange and ironical reflection upon man's 

 claim to wisdom and advancement, and cause his practice to fall lamen- 

 tably short of even so early and obvious an ideal as the sanctity of life. 

 How else are we to account for the fact that while all England will 

 thrill at the news of some specially savage murder, or while we our- 

 selves would be saddened to the end of our days by the result of some 

 homicidal carelessness, we yet contrive to read morning after morning 

 without a sigh or even a passing remark of battles in which thousands 

 of human beings have perished for a cause in which they had no more 

 real concern than they had for the politics of the planet Jupiter ? 



It was thus, then, that men embarked upon that process of forming 

 ideals which led them from the primitive thought, " Self-preservation is 

 the first (and only) law in Nature," up to the highest abstract expres- 

 sion of moral duty, " Fiat justitia, ruat ccelum." But now observe the 

 immensely important influence which the formation of ideals exercised 

 upon the moral constitution. It was this which enabled men, amid the 

 pressure and conflicts of life, to vindicate their primeval claims to them- 

 selves, and to establish an independent moral existence in the midst 

 of society, as they had at first established an independent physical ex- 

 istence in the midst of the universe. The immediate effect was that 

 they became a law unto themselves. ( For instance, under the influence 

 of such an ideal as the sanctity of human life, they refuse to kill even 

 when authority commands them ; na\', they prefer themselves to die. 

 That is to say, the original claim to bodily life reappears in the form of 

 a claim to moral life, to which we insist that the same deference shall 

 be paid as our forefathers claimed for their natural existence, and which, 

 thanks to the innate law of our being, we refuse to surrender upon any 

 conditions whatever. And thus we have come to understand what is 

 meant by the significant phrase, "rights of conscience." Can it be 

 said that this has been satisfactorily explained up to the present time ? 



