Evolution of Morals. 279 



what the cell is to vital tissue : the more perfect the cell, 

 the healthier is the tissue. Obliterate the individuality of 

 the cell, and all high organization is impossible. The com- 

 munistic idea would subordinate the individual to society, 

 — to humanity in general. It would sacrifice the living 

 man to an abstraction. The ultimate tendency of this ideal 

 is toward the obliteration of individuality — the establish- 

 ment of homogeneity of character and intellect, the fossil- 

 ization of social instincts and activities through individual 

 conformity and inactivity, thus defeating its avowed end 

 and aim. This tendency is opposed to the entire trend of 

 evolution, which constantly tends to differentiation, hetero- 

 geneity, individualism, progress. Whenever the communis- 

 tic ideal becomes dominant, society is arrested in its develop- 

 ment or hastens to decay. Communism is the sure precursor 

 of social disintegration and death ; it is a reversion to the 

 earliest social status of uncivilized man. After communism, 

 by a natural reaction, comes anarchy ; and anarchy lived 

 out is social dissolution. This result can only be prevented 

 by respect for the rights and personality of the individual, 

 and respect by the individual for the laws of conduct as 

 determined by the science of morals. Voluntary co-opera- 

 tion instead of legislative communism constitutes the social 

 ideal prophetically outlined by the study of the principles 

 underlying the entire process of ethical and social evolution. 

 The liberation of the individual — his increasing freedom 

 to secure the satisfactions consequent upon the natural and 

 harmonious use of all his faculties — proceeds pari passu 

 with an increasing dependence on society in general. Thus 

 society integrates by a natural process of growth, forming 

 a real brotherhood of consent, instead of a militant organi- 

 zation, consolidated by external coercion. The condition 

 of society involved in this ideal is one in which each indi- 

 vidual shall have full opportunity for the development of 

 his whole nature, and to which each shall freely contribute 

 his noblest and most conscientious service. 



Among the hills of old Berkshire, there is a noble birch 

 tree, gigantic in trunk and limb, and abundant in foliage, 

 which towers above its neighboring companions, but grows, 

 apparently, out of an immense granite bowlder which was 

 deposited centuries ago, where it now rests, by the action of 

 a mighty glacier whose resistless energy had borne it from 

 some far-away mountain summit. Beneath the rock the 



