292 UNIVERSAL EVOLUTION 



sense, the term life includes every phase of physical, and 

 psychical phenomena, viz., those aspects of life treated in 

 biology, psychology, sociology, and ethics. There is unity 

 not only in body and ' ' mind, ' ' but in the laws of society 

 and of ethics. The scientific definition of one is the 

 proper designation of all. Therefore a sensible code of 

 ethics is the natural correspondence of self with not- 

 self ; just as the proper definition of social law is the 

 correspondence between each individual, and that part 

 of his environment, included in the term mankind. 



BELIEFS FOUNDED ON PHENOMENISM. The beliefs 

 of man depend upon the development of his brain 

 structure. His discrimination, between the true and 

 false, depends upon the images recalled by sensa- 

 tion, in the higher centers ; and the coalescing of these 

 images into other conditions called perceptions. It 

 is a process of reasoning, which depends upon the 

 quality of the brain, and the perfection of his past 

 experience ; that is, the quality of his education in the 

 past. But the education of the past has been largely 

 confined to either immaterial things, or fanciful objec- 

 tivity, or to the realm of the unknowable. Fiction has 

 occupied the brain too frequently. Mankind has been 

 in the attitude of childhood on all of these questions. 

 It readily believed anything concerning the different 

 phases of philosophy, that was solemnly asserted by 

 either writers, or speakers, who appeared to have a 

 little more learning and boldness than the masses. 

 This condition, of helpless mental dependence, is the 

 same as that of childhood, which believes in the actual 

 reality of Santa Glaus. The child grows out of this 

 belief, and is finally convinced that the saint of gifts 

 is only a subjective generic image of a generous, but 

 natural giver of good things, because reason takes the 



