COSMIC PHILOSOPHY 



bour in producing a mind capable to a greater 

 and greater extent of ideally resuscitating and 

 combining relations not present to the senses. 



But immense as was the step thus achieved 

 in advance, the progress from brute to man was 

 not yet accomplished. As we have already 

 shown, the circumstances which by widening 

 and diversifying experience have mainly con- 

 tributed to heighten man's faculty of represen- 

 tativeness, have been for the most part circum- 

 stances attendant upon man's sociality, or the 

 capacity of individuals for aggregating into com- 

 munities of increasing extent and complexity. 

 Here we become involved in considerations re- 

 lating to the emotions as well as to the intelli- 

 gence. The capacity for sustaining the various 

 relationships implied by the existence of a social 

 aggregate — whether in the case of a primeval 

 family community or of a modern nation — 

 cannot be explained without taking into the ac- 

 count the genesis of those moral feelings by the 

 possession of which man has come to differ from 

 the highest brutes even more conspicuously than 

 by his purely intellectual achievements. The 

 task now before us, therefore, is to explain the 

 genesis of the moral feelings which lie at the 

 bottom of sociality in the human race ; and with 

 reference to this question I shall presently have 

 a suggestion to offer, which will be found as 

 serviceable as it is interesting and novel. Let 

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