280 Evolution of Morals. 



earliest tiny rootlets of the tree found soil and nourishment : 

 its first tender shoot sprung up into some small crevice in 

 the great bowlder above them.- Here, one might think, it 

 would have paused, submitting to the adamantine pressure, 

 either crushed utterly to the earth, or dwarfed and deformed 

 by its unyielding environment. But it had the irresistable 

 evolutionary forces of Nature behind it ; the sunlight above 

 wooed it from its prison-house — it pushed upward toward 

 the light. Gradually the little crevice in the rock was 

 widened, the great bowlder was split asunder as by the 

 hammer of Thor, — the noble tree, scarcely distorted by the 

 struggle, protected from destructive storms by its conquered 

 enemy, grew with the years, and spread abroad on every 

 side its leafy beauty and the blessing of its grateful shade. 

 So conscience — the moral sense — a little germ at first, 

 inclosed in the hard shell of the natural instincts, struggling 

 against the mighty bowlder of animalism, has at last split 

 the obstacle in twain, and emerged to bless the world and 

 justify the method which has given it birth. And the In- 

 finite Energy, one in the misty nebula and the glowing sun, 

 in rock and tree and animal, and in the mind and conscience 

 of man, " saw everything that it had made, and behold, it 

 was very good." 



