272 UNIVERSAL EVOLUTION 



or inharmony, are unnatural. It is evident that those 

 laws, that receive the assent of the greatest number of 

 the units of a society, are the ones which will hold such 

 a society together, and will produce the greatest strength. 

 Slavery, oppression, witchcraft, magic, sorcery, are en- 

 tirely human, there are no such things in nature. Should 

 human institutions cease, these delusions would cease 

 with them. The farther from natural law society de- 

 parts, the more deluded it is, the more fragile, and less 

 permanent. Human law may give one man special 

 privilege over another, but natural law leaves evolution 

 to act only by general, not special methods. There is 

 no repeal, nor amendment to natural law, because no 

 error has been made in the first instance. Human law 

 is a history of error and amendment, or trial, failure and 

 renewed effort. But science discloses that evolution has 

 been continuous under the same law always ; that matter 

 is indestructible, force is persistent, the same effect 

 always follows the same cause, that no natural law has 

 ever been suspended for an instant to correct any error, 

 or to favor man, or any organism, or to relieve him 

 from his necessary response to an unchanging environ- 

 ment. These are the reasons why the rule for our guid- 

 ance in this life should be based on our knowledge of 

 phenomena. One defect of human law is that it is so 

 full of misconceptions of this principle. Our courts follow 

 the precedents whether they are equitable or not, and 

 lawyers keep up the sacredness of statute law and deci- 

 sions. Our lawyers say this should be a government of 

 law. But it should be a government of equity, which 

 it- will not become, until laws are equitable only, and 

 shall be construed between litigants, on the basis of 

 equity, or what the people conceive as equity. The 

 present unrest concerning courts, and their decisions 



