336 THE ASCENT OF MAN 



Simple as seems the method by which the first 

 few sparks of Love were nursed into flame in the 

 bosom of Maternity, the details of the evolution are 

 so intricate as to require a chapter to themselves. 

 But the emphasis which Nature puts on this pro- 

 cess may be judged of by the fact that one half 

 the human race had to be set apart to sustain and 

 perfect it. To the evolutionist who discerns the 

 true proportions of the forces which made for the 

 Ascent of Man, one of the two or three great 

 events in the natural history of the world was the 

 institution of sex. It is here that the master- forces 

 which were to dominate the latest and highest 

 stages of the process start; here, specialized into 

 Egoism and Altruism, they part ; and here, each 

 having run its different course, they meet to distri- 

 bute their gains to a succeeding race. With the 

 initial impulses of their sex strengthened by the 

 different life-routine to which each led, these two 

 forces ran their course through history, determining 

 by their ceaseless reactions the order and progress 

 of the world, or when wrongly balanced, its disorder 

 and decay. According to evolutional philosophy 



authorized to assume that a remembered action may be asso- 

 ciated with remembered results that come within the experience 

 of the animal, some phases of which may thus become, as 

 combined with pleasure or pain, ends to seek or consequences 

 to avoid." — Evolutional Ethics^ p. 386, 



