PARTIAL CONCILIATION OF THE NEW AND OLD ETHICS. 387 



in effect does, that though in their origin they had the 

 good of the tribe in view, yet veracity, justice, and 

 benevolence are now to be pursued for their own sakes, 

 under the guidance of reason ; the good of society being 

 too large an aim in its totality, too shifting and uncertain 

 in any special form, to constitute a steady object of 

 pursuit. Let the evolutionist admit freely, as he well 

 may, that if we are filled with a passion for truth or 

 justice, the significance of these moral facts for us is that 

 they require an issue in action correspondent to them, 

 and their meaning in the moral economy of the universe 

 is that, in an unjust world which hates the truth, there 

 must always be spirits thus strongly touched with a 

 passion for truth and justice ; and that if these and such 

 as these, above all, do not stand up for these ideals, and 

 at times, if need be, stand prepared to quarrel in their 

 behalf, injustice, and falsehood, and fraud, and violence 

 (like rank and poisonous growths) would reign supreme 

 on earth, until at last society, composed wholly of such 

 immoral and warring elements, reverted to its proper 

 chaos, and effected its own destruction. 



But he who feels strongly the sacredness of the 

 sentiments need not stop to inquire how the feeling of 

 sanctity has grown around the original ruder and simpler 

 form of the feeling. Let him accept the fact of its 

 sacredness, as given in the feeling, in all faith. He need 

 not care to analyze it into its constituent .moral elements 

 with the psychologist, nor to trace the history of its 

 growth with the. evolutionist. There is little use in 

 either the analysis or the history for him who is strongly 

 filled with the sentiment, and who wishes to act. And, 

 in fact, such a one does not care to verify the legitimacy 

 of his moral impulse, for fear it should prove an illusion. 

 He embraces it and he acts upon it in full faith that it 



