THE STABILITY OF TRUTH. 



355 



if we are not confined to Balfour's argument in a circle, 

 we must look to the facts of organic evolution, of 

 which the existence of man is a part. 



Each living being is a link in a continuous chain of 

 life, going back in the past to the unknown beginnings 

 of life. Into this chain of life, so far as 

 Each organism a we know death has never entered, be- 

 link in the chain . 



of life cause only in life has the ancestor the 



power of casting off the germ cells by 

 which life is continued. Each individual is in a sense 

 the guardian of the life chain in which it forms a link. 

 Each link is tested as to its fitness to the conditions 

 external to itself in which it carries on its functions. 

 Those creatures unadapted to the environment, what- 

 ever it may be, are destroyed, as well as those not 

 adaptable. And this environment by which each is 

 tested is the objective universe. It is not the world as 

 man knows it. It is not the world as the creature may 

 imagine it. It is the world as it is. Nature has no par- 

 don for ignorance or illusions. She is no respecter of 

 persons. Her laws and her penalties consider only what 

 is, and have no dealings with semblances. By this ex- 

 perience we come to know that reality exists, that there 

 is an external world to the demands of 

 which our senses, our reason, our powers 

 of action are all concessions. The safety 

 of each chain of life is proportioned to the adaptation 

 of its links to these conditions. This adaptation is in 

 its essence obedience. The obedience of any creature 

 is conditioned on its response in action to sensation or 

 knowledge. Sense-perception and intellect alike stand 

 as advisers to its power of choice. The power of choice 

 involves the need to choose right ; for wrong choice 

 leads to death. Death ends the chain of which the 

 creature is a link, and the life of the world is continued 



