ON THE HYPOTHESIS OF EVOLUTION. 157 



exert ; and other living organizations are subject to his conven- 

 ience and rule, and not, as in previous geological periods, entirely 

 beyond his control. These two terms being given, it is maintained 

 that the present situation of the most civilized men has been at- 

 tained through the operation of a law of mutual action and reac- 

 tion — a law whose results, seen at the present time, liave depended 

 on the acceleration or retardation of its rate of action ; which rate 

 has been regulated, according to the degree in which a third great 

 term, viz., the law of moral or (what is the same thing) true re- 

 ligious development, has been combined in the plan. What it is 

 necessary to establish in order to prove the above hypothesis is — 



I. That in each of the particulars above enumerated the devel- 

 opment of the human species is similar to that of the individual 

 from infancy to maturity. 



II. That from a condition of subserviency to the laws of mat- 

 ter, man's intelligence enables him, by an accumulation of power, 

 to become in a sense independent of those laws, and to pursue a 

 course of intellectual and spiritual progress. 



III. That failure to accomplish a moral or spiritual develop- 

 ment will again reduce him to a subserviency to the laws of 

 matter. 



This brings us to the subject of moral development. And here 

 I may be allowed to suggest that the weight of the evidence is 

 opposed to the philosophy, " falsely so called," of necessitarianism, 

 which asserts that the first two terms alone were sufficient to work 

 out man's salvation in this world and the next ; and, on the other 

 hand, to that anti-philosophy which asserts that all things in hu- 

 man progress, intellectual and moral, are regulated by immediate 

 divine interposition instead of through instrumentalities. Hence, 

 the subject divides itself at once into two great departments — viz., 

 that of the development of mind or intelligence, and that of the 

 development of morality. 



That these laws are distinct there can be no doubt, since in 

 the individual man one of them may produce results without the 

 aid of the other. Yet it can be sho^wn that each is the most in- 

 valuable aid and stimulant to the other, and most favorable to 

 the rapid advance of the mind in either direction. 



III. SPIRITUAL OK MORAL DEVELOPMENT. 



In examining this subject, we first inquire (Section a) whether 

 there is any connection between physical and moral or religious 



