264 The Morality of Nature 



First, The impulse which produces in matter the Hfe of 

 the world reveals a progressive quality and power forever 

 higher than any conception or definition now within human 

 reach, and therefore in finality unknowable. 



Second, In the process of this unknown power, there is 

 visible, continual progress in the activities of matter, from 

 unconscious reaction, toward perfection of conduct con- 

 sciously conceived. This is a progress under knowable laws, 

 which proceeds by the continued addition of experience, and 

 by survival of successful conduct, which is called evolution. 



Third, The evolution of humanity with self-conscious 

 understanding, still proceeds, and is accountable under the 

 same impulse which empowers all lesser life for its lower 

 progress. 



Fourth, Humanity having achieved self-consciousness ac- 

 quires added power, and added accountability, and a new 

 incentive in ideality; and any degree of progress in organi- 

 zation, and any new knowledge of natural laws, or of the 

 good and evil made distinguishable by them, is always an 

 endowment from which aspiration reaches for still higher 

 ideals, therefore the future will at all times promise an ad- 

 vance which passes beyond the conceptions of any present 

 period. 



Fifth, Life thus progressing in organization is continu- 

 ously living through the generations, by the undying survival 

 of the actual physical plasma or life substance, which, apart 

 from any supernatural endowment except its fundamental 

 condition of life, is in its nature potentially immortal. 



Sixth, Death, penal and retributive in the extreme, is the 

 death in sterility in which the life plasm dies without issue 



