212 The Morality of Nature 



affairs in the world, wherein we can see successful propaga- 

 tion of good by the exercise of this individual right; and 

 a stable, natural progress of humanity, in ways, and at levels, 

 below the scope of the makers of codes. We see co-operative 

 commercial civilization, through its eager practice of trade 

 and industry, attended by barely enough moral teaching to 

 deny its own vice, securing domination over barbarisms of 

 all styles and strengths, by meeting them on their own level 

 and touching them with the almost unconscious higher 

 abilities and higher desires, and we see these desires grow 

 into ambitions, and acquire self-sustaining power, so that 

 new units arise and races are blended, or work side by side. 

 And while this growth of commerce and commercial mutual 

 interest has extended until the whole world now feels it, even 

 to the remote corners, so that there is no longer any country 

 unknown to it, the old missionary efforts seeking to devise 

 a standardized goodness of conduct, and to impose it upon 

 the world, have turned from arms and conquest by which 

 such conversion was once hoped, and has come to seek 

 alliance with the commercial and utilitarian motives. 



The true followers of false prophets have fallen but little 

 farther than the false followers of true prophets; for 

 similarly the internal affairs of the nations have escaped the 

 former compulsion toward formulated moralities, and the 

 religious power, which was supreme and vindictive in this 

 regard, has become a mere protest; while the functions it 

 failed to perform are replaced by a striving and searching 

 for knowledge amid the wrecks of moral authority, and by 

 instinctive revivals of emotional memories. 



And yet out of this disorder, which seems to the old 



