260 The Morality of Nature 



worthiness in the other. The tendency to differentiate sex- 

 ually, and to specialize virtues which are thus developed, is 

 generally accompanied by a physical redistribution of all 

 aptitudes to both sexes. Although some exceptions of 

 course exist in regard to aptitudes specialized in one sex 

 it is the function of sex to continually merge these differ- 

 ences. Thus faith and truth and love and courage and pride 

 and persistence, and the civilized perceptions of such quali- 

 ties as appreciation of music, or of color, or beauty of form, 

 which may be most naturally acquired and cultivated by one 

 sex are, through union, transmitted to both. Beside the 

 differences arising in environment and operating in greater 

 force, appears the fact that in the descent by sex, the whole 

 race which began its similarities in a community of origin, is 

 continually reunited by alliances. Sex thus maintains in 

 evolution the community of character necessary for the ac- 

 tivity of faith, as well as selective exclusion of faithlessness. 

 There is thus a physical compulsion of that distribution of 

 attainments which altruism shows to be desirable. 



Faith, like other virtues, exists for its beneficence, for 

 the sake of the good it will bring to those who practice it, and 

 thus it becomes a necessary part of the character of any race 

 civilizing in altruism. And although it is a direct aid to 

 unity of purpose, as thus developed, yet it is evidently of an 

 even deeper benefit as an educational factor. In its direct 

 action it merges in the faculty of conscience, and is not a 

 separate source of authority or of new inspiration. It is the 

 means by which conscience is rapidly endowed with per- 

 ceptions. The knowledge commanded by the individual in- 

 tellect is slow, but the knowledge by faith when a greater 



