EVOLUTION AND ETHICS. 21 



lias become the past ; the " is " should be " was." And the more 

 we learn of the nature of things, the more evident is it that what 

 we call rest is only unperceived activity ; that seeming peace is 

 silent but strenuous battle. In every part, at every moment, the 

 state of the cosmos is the expression of a transitory adjustment 

 of contending forces ; a scene of strife, in which all the combat- 

 ants fall in turn. What is true of each part is true of the whole. 

 Natural knowledge tends more and more to the conclusion that 

 " all the choir of heaven and furniture of the earth " are the transi- 

 tory forms of parcels of cosmic substance wending along the road 

 of evolution, from nebulous potentiality, through endless growths 

 of sun and planet and satellite ; through all varieties of matter ; 

 through infinite diversities of life and thought ; possibly through 

 modes of being of which we neither have a conception, nor are 

 competent to form any, back to the undefinable latency from 

 which they arose. Thus the most obvious attribute of the cosmos 

 is its impermanence. It assumes the aspect not so much of a per- 

 manent entity as of a changeful process, in which naught endures 

 save the flow of energy and the rational order which pervades it. 



We have climbed our bean-stalk and have reached a wonder- 

 land in which the common and the familiar become things new 

 and strange. In the exploration of the cosmic process thus typi- 

 fied, the highest intelligence of man finds inexhaustible employ- 

 ment ; giants are subdued to our service ; and the spiritual affec- 

 tions of the contemplative philosopher are engaged by beauties 

 worthy of eternal constancy. 



But there is another aspect of the cosmic process, so perfect 

 as a mechanism, so beautiful as a work of art. Where the cos- 

 mopoietic energy works through sentient beings, there arises, 

 among its other manifestations, that which we call pain or suffer- 

 ing. This baleful product of evolution increases in quantity and 

 in intensity, with advancing grades of animal organization, until 

 it attains its highest level in man. Further, the consummation is 

 not reached in man, the mere animal ; nor in man, the whole or 

 half savage ; but only in man, the member of an organized polity. 

 And it is a necessary consequence of his attempt to live in this 

 way ; that is, under those conditions which are essential to the 

 full development of his noblest powers. 



Man, the animal, in fact, has worked his way to the headship 

 of the sentient world, and has become the superb animal which 

 he is, in virtue of his success in the struggle for existence. The 

 conditions having been of a certain order, man's organization has 

 adjusted itself to them better than that of his competitors in the 

 cosmic strife. In the case of mankind, the self-assertion, the un- 

 scrupulous seizing upon all that can be grasped, the tenacious 



