282 The Morality of Nature 



This process is proven beyond question by modern science. 

 There are still some persons who dispute it, but they are 

 those who do not study. It is to be examined here as an 

 established foundation upon which to base philosophic 

 reasoning in regard to conduct. 



In the course of this destiny in evolution, humanity pur- 

 sues a career from a beginning unknown to an end unknown. 

 Our knowledge of the present and recently past portions of 

 the sequence, is a comparatively exact science; and it is a 

 science of causation, and so we may extend it by logical 

 inference backward into the remoter past, and forward into 

 the farther future. 



Man does not enjoy alone the privileges of this progress. 

 All nature participates in it under laws which appear to be 

 universal. But man stands as a creature which has emerged 

 from the lower degrees, and who has attained, in psychology, 

 a plane so much higher, that to careless inspection it appears 

 as a different dispensation. Yet the law can be found only 

 as one law for all. It may be that man owes his superiority 

 to a beginning, or an early favor, not encountered by his 

 lesser rivals, the remoteness of all the beginnings is such 

 that only the dimmest of light reveals it, in the uncertainty 

 of conjecture. But uncertainty is not in nature a ground 

 for rejection or disbelief. Evolution is a process itself based 

 always upon uncertainties. The impulses which prompt new 

 and higher activities, and which adopt and confirm new 

 forms and organizations, are seldom infallible. They are 

 the successes selected by actual trial, from innumerable other 

 impulses which failed. And this is just as true of human 

 intellectual impulse as of animal impulse. Although the 



