RETROGRESSIVE MAN. 277 



the peculiar extended agency which he exerts, are due not 

 only to the agency of his psychical instinct, but to his rational 

 consciousness, which is provided for by his spiritual element. 

 The amount of good he does depends upon the use he makes 

 of his faculties. The welfare of the entire 'human constitution, 

 organic as well as spiritual, can only be conditioned by a 

 proper action of the spiritual element. This has always to be 

 remembered in looking for an explanation of all the varieties 

 of race and of individual personal character. Why, then, 

 should man alone, of all the living beings on this globe, have 

 been left so unfettered that his welfare should depend on his 

 own choice ? 



5. Herein lies the great mystery of humanity, on the 

 existence of which depends that religiosity which is charac- 

 teristic of every form of the human race. The conscious- 

 ness of untruth, and of error in some form or other, exists in 

 every modification of man ; and it is equally certain that all 

 the vicissitudes of human history, and all the distress against 

 which man has had to struggle, have been directly due to his 

 tendency to untruth, and his liability to error. 



G. 1 need scarcely remind you that these statements are 

 not merely scientific in their character. The grounds on 

 which I believe them are not scientific grounds alone. The 

 evidence on which you have satisfied yourselves regarding 

 them is involved in moral science, and in those statements of 

 that revealed record by which our higher beliefs are en- 

 Lightened, confirmed, and sustained. The statements which I 

 have submitted to you, regarding the dependence of our 

 human economy on the wellbeing of its spiritual element, are 

 unanswerable; and therefore, OB the grounds already submitted 

 to you, the principle itself must necessarily be employed by 

 the anthropologist in the discussion of any of the higher 



quesl inns of his subject. 



7. I would lay it down as a principle, thai whereas we 



