4o6 THE ASCENT OF MAN 



out, refined and reinforced, to do their holy 

 work. 



Looking at the mere dynamics of the question, 

 the Family contains all the machinery, and nearly 

 all the power, for the moral education of mankind. 

 Feebly, but adequately, in the early chapters of 

 Man's history it fulfilled its function of nursing 

 Love, the Mother of all morality, and Righteous- 

 ness, the Father of all morality, so preparing a 

 parentage for all the beautiful spiritual children 

 which in later years should spring from them. If 

 life henceforth is to go on at all, it must be a better 

 life, a more loving life, a more abundant life ; and 

 this premium upon Love means — if it means any- 

 thing — that Evolution is taking henceforth an ethical 

 direction. It is no more possible to interpret Nature 

 physically from this point than to interpret a ** Holy 

 Family " of Raphael's in terms of the material struc- 

 ture of canvas or the qualities of pigments. Canvas 

 may be coarse or fine, pigments may be vegetable 

 or mineral ; but whether the colours be crushed out 

 of madder or ground out of arsenic or lead is of 

 no importance now. Once these things were im- 

 portant ; by infinitely slow processes Nature formed 

 them ; by clever arts the colourman prepared them. 

 But the " Holy Family " did not lie potentially in 

 the madder-bud, nor in the earth with the lead and 



