COSMIC PHILOSOPHY 



the former are even more powerful than those 

 recognized . by the latter ; while, 'lastly, as re- 

 gards the basis of these ethical relations, the 

 superiority of the scientific view is most con- 

 spicuously manifest. Far from its being true, as 

 Mr. Mivart seems to fear, that the Doctrine of 

 Evolution leaves morality without a theoretical 

 basis, it supplies for it a theoretical basis incom- 

 parably deeper and stronger than has ever been 

 supplied for it by any anthropomorphic theory 

 of things. For not only does the Doctrine show 

 that the principles of action which the religious 

 instincts of men have agreed in pronouncing 

 sacred are involved in the very nature of life 

 itself, regarded as a continuous adjustment ; but 

 it shows that the obligation to conform to these 

 principles, instead of deriving its authority from 

 the arbitrary command of a mythologic quasi- 

 human Ruler, derives it from the innermost ne- 

 cessities of that process of evolution which is the 

 perpetual revelation of Divine Power. He to 

 whom the theory of evolution, in all its details, 

 has become as familiar as the saws and maxims 

 of the old mythology are to him who still ac- 

 cepts it, will recognize that to be untrue to the 

 highest attainable ethical code is to be untrue to 

 philosophy, untrue to science, untrue to himself. 

 Thus in the grand equation between duty and 

 action, the substitution of scientific for theolo- 

 gical symbols involves no alteration of ethical 

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