314 THE EVOLUTION OF A FATHER. 



under whatever sanctions, is that some standard of 

 good or bad shall arise. No abstract sense of duty, of 

 course, here exists ; no perfect law ; it is a purely per- 

 sonal and local code ; but the word duty has at least 

 received a first imperfect meaning" ; and the Father, in 

 some rough way, forms an external conscience to 

 those beneath him. 



Such is the tentative theory of the advocates of 

 Evolutional Ethics. It may or may not be a possible 

 account of the rise of a sense of obligation, but it is 

 certain that it does not account for the whole of it. 

 Why, also, that particular thing should be elicited 

 under the circumstances described is an unanswered 

 question. In attempting to trace its rise, no rationale 

 appears of its origin ; all proofs, in short, of its evolu- 

 tion take for granted its previous existence. A latent 

 thing has become active ; an invisible thing has be- 

 come apparent. In one sense a relation has been 

 created, in another sense a quality in that relation 

 has been revealed. A new experiment upon human 

 nature has been tried; a new discovery of its prop- 

 erties has been the result. 



That these moral elements, on the other hand, must 

 have a beginning somewhere in space and time is cer- 

 tain enough. Not less necessary to the world than 

 the Mother's gift of Love is the twin offering of the 

 Father Righteousness. And if, almost before the 

 soul is born, the shadowy outline of a moral order 

 should begin to loom out in history, the later phases 

 and the later sanctions lose nothing of their quality, 

 are all the more wonderful and all the more divine, 

 because met by moral adumbrations in the distant 

 past. If the later children had their ten command- 



