26 INTRODUCTION. 



and sit in judgment upon its results." 1 May we ask 

 the philosopher how he accounts for them ? As little 

 can he account for them as he who has "no other 

 basis than the Struggle for existence." Truly, the 

 writer continues, the question " cannot be answered so 

 long as we regard morality merely as an incidental re- 

 sult, a by-product, as it were, of the cosmical system." 

 But what if morality be the main product of the cos- 

 mical system— of even the cosmical system ? What if 

 it can be shown that it is the essential and not the in- 

 cidental result of it, and that so far from being a by- 

 product, it is immorality that is the by-product ? 



These interrogations may be too strongly put. 

 " Accompaniments " of the cosmical system might be 

 better than " products " ; " revelations through that 

 process " may be nearer the truth than "results " of it. 

 But what is intended to show is that the moral order 

 is a continuous line from the beginning, that it has 

 had throughout, so to speak, a basis in the cosmos, 

 that upon this, as a trellis-work, it has climbed up- 

 wards to the top. The one — the trellis-work — is to be 

 conceived of as an incarnation ; the other — the mani- 

 festation — as a revelation; the one is an Evolution 

 from below, the other an Involution from above. 

 Philosophy has long since assured us of the last, but 

 because it was never able to show us the completeness 

 of the first, science refused to believe it. The de- 

 faulter nevertheless was not philosophy but science. 

 Its business was with the trellis-work. And it gave 

 us a broken trellis- work, a ladder with only one side, 

 and every step on the other side resting on air. When 

 science tried to climb the ladder it failed; the steps 

 1 Prof. Seth, Blackwood's Magazine, Dec, 1893. 



