6 The Morality of Nature 



ality. Communicated belief cannot pretend to be a substi- 

 tute for personal experience and preception ; but it serves as 

 a base for that highest phase of studentship, and as an expres- 

 sion of that oldest of old facts in heredity; that moral knowl- 

 edge is received by youth from age because it can accumulate 

 in no other way. 



There is no attempt here to announce any new discovery 

 in natural or psychological science. Assertions in these sub- 

 jects when made are rather quoted as being of established 

 truth; or else as frank hypotheses; and there is no apology 

 offered for the repetition of truths well known of old, or of 

 those newly revealed by modern research ; because all such are 

 presented, not to declare them, but only to use them as a basis 

 for reasoning. A general apology is made for the free use of 

 newly published knowledge without separate quotation of 

 authority. This liberty is taken because it is not as announce- 

 ments of science but as arguments in morality, that these 

 things are presented. It is sought to avoid controversy and 

 to make affirmation in a confessedly imperfect form, without 

 demonstrations. Those who work in these matters know 

 better than any others, the transitory nature of wisdom and 

 its liability to correction. Where so much is hypothesis and 

 where the positive is so frequently superseded, it would be 

 futile to build in a pretense of stability. 



Ethical inquiry follows paths, not only of logic, but those 

 of natural impulse and sentiment, in a belief that impulses 

 inborn and inherited did not arise without reason, and 

 therein it arrives at some conclusions different from those 

 which philosophy attains by logical synthesis. The common 

 aspirations of men sometimes lead to ideals which are by 



