INVOLUTION. 341 



prisoners await their unknown fate. It is not the 

 monotony of life which destroys men, but its point- 

 lessness ; they can bear its weight, its meaninglessness 

 crushes them. But the same great revolution that 

 the discovery of the axial rotation of the earth effected 

 in the realm of physics, the announcement of the 

 doctrine of Evolution makes in the moral world. 

 Already, even in these days of its dawn, a sudden and 

 marvellous light has fallen upon earth and heaven. 

 Evolution is less a doctrine than a light ; it is a light 

 revealing in the chaos of the past a perfect and grow- 

 ing order, giving meaning even to the confusions of the 

 present, discovering through all the deviousness 

 around us the paths of progress, and flashing its rays 

 already upon a coming goal. Men begin to see an 

 undeviating ethical purpose in this material world, a 

 tide, that from eternity has never turned, making for 

 perfectness. In that vast progression of Nature, that 

 vision of all things from the first of time moving from 

 low to high, from incompleteness to completeness, 

 from imperfection to perfection, the moral nature rec- 

 ognizes in all its height and depth the eternal claim 

 upon itself. Wholeness, perfection, love these have 

 always been required of Man. But never before on 

 the natural plane have they been proclaimed by voices 

 so commanding, or enforced by sanctions so great and 

 rational. 



Is Nature henceforth to become the ethical teacher 

 of the world ? Shall" its aims become the guide, its 

 spirit the inspiration of Man's life? Is there no 

 ground here where all the faiths and all the creeds 

 may meet nay, no ground for a final faith and a final 

 creed? If all men could see the inner meaning and 



