Humanity 41 



nothing else, it would at least deserve our lasting 

 gratitude for having enlarged man's conception, and 

 strengthened his conviction, of the intimate kinship 

 between all forms of created being. Life seems to be 

 the one undoubtedly sacred thing in life. What this 

 world needed was apparently a new baptism into this 

 sacredness of all life which is not inimical to higher 

 forms of life. " Thou shalt not kill" would appear 

 to have been confined, as a commandment in man's 

 moral law, not to man alone. It seems to have been 

 meant to extend to all forms of created life which are 

 not pernicious per se in the sense of militating against 

 man's survival, or which cannot be used to further that 

 survival. Among the more backward peoples of Chris- 

 tendom where ignorance is the rule among the masses, 

 brutality still undoubtedly prevails; but even here the 

 leaven of humanity is working slowly but surely. In 

 the more advanced nations of Christendom, the phe- 

 nomenon is so patent that at times it assumes almost 

 an absurdly exaggerated aspect. The people of the 

 East, with their religious belief in metempsychosis, 

 would appear to be decidedly in advance of the more 

 backward Western nations in this respect. And yet, 

 even among the latter we have had from the beginning 

 the ideal uttered by the founder of the Christian reli- 

 gion (and hence to be received with the reverence due 

 to the utterances of all unveilers of new evolutionary 

 ideals) of the humble sparrows, " not one of whom shall 

 jail on the ground without your Father" "not one of 

 whom is forgotten in the sight of Him" who " feedeth 



