r, 



74 The Universe and Life 



ences ; realities that we know because we experience 

 them, as we experience the satisfaction of food when 

 we are hungry. They are constituent parts of life, 

 whose reality and validity rest on nothing else than 

 the experience of living things. 



Through these relations, taken in connection with 

 the gradual advance in mental grasp, the single in- 

 dividual comes to recognize that there exist other 

 individuals to whom Kfe is as desirable, as valuable 

 as to himself. The mental experiences of these other 

 individuals he does not directly share, but indirectly 

 he can share them. All these individuals are pieces of 

 the same living material with himself, of similar 

 grade of development, with similar capabilities of ex- 

 perience. The individual who has reached an advanced 

 grade of mental development comes to recognize that 

 there is no discoverable reason why the promotion of 

 life for one of these pieces of the hving material 

 should be given preference over that of the others. It 

 is as desirable, as right, for the others to flourish as 

 it is for him. He comes to recognize himself as but a 

 member of a greater organism, of which there are 

 many equal members with equal rights. 



This intellectual recognition of equality in claims 

 of many individuals, including one's self, comes to 

 reinforce that instinctive love for the fellow creature 

 and sympathy with him that have developed earlier. 

 The whole is the birth of unselfishness and of the 

 conception of justice to others as part of the province 

 of right or of what is to be done. Throughout, it is the 

 promotion of life, of its fulness and adequacy, that is 



