DEONTOLOGY. 289 
more than an idealized scheme in which I have presented 
certain of my inferences from facts, respecting which there 
can be no dispute. So far as my immediate purpose is con- 
cerned, it brings into question the authority of no historic 
record. In drawing it directly, so to speak, from nature, I 
have, as may be seen, conformed it to the outlines of the 
Scripture narrative. I could not have done otherwise ; but 
the relation which the mystic story bears to the hypotheses 
I find suggested by phenomena is, so far as it has served my 
purpose, simply that of a profoundly lumimous and most 
instructive allegory. And indeed, that nothing in the way 
of fiction, even were it so denominable, could have been 
devised more consonant with facts and nature, will, I think, 
become still more apparent as, in seeking to bring fully into 
view the fundamental principles of human duty, we proceed 
with our investigation of the course of ethical development. 
Phenomena of moral import, traceable through ages past, 
and dating from the initial limit of recorded time, all point 
distinctly to the probability that the immediate consequence 
of that development, which made morality in human actions 
possible, was not improvement, but deterioration. When man 
had learned to turn his thoughts upon himself, and to dis- 
criminate his heart’s desires from the behests of an All-ruling 
Will, the former, we may be certain, he continued to obey, or 
failed at any rate to subject to persistent and effectual 
control; the latter he acknowledged, yet remorsefully, 
reluctantly, and fitfully. The first man, if capacity and latent 
powers be ignored, “is of the earth, earthy” (1 Cor. xv, 47) : 
as such he has no heavenly aspirations, nor could they by any 
possibility precede a fundamental sense of human duty. In 
the development of this, had they accompanied it, he might 
have risen: as a matter of fact he fell. And thus the naive, 
unselfconscious singleness of motives purely natural gave 
place within him to duplicity, prevarication, evasion, and 
every other outcome of fruitless efforts he had made to cover 
with the semblance of consistency the workings of a mind 
from which the vain attempt at dual government had banished 
peace. 
But, in its bearing upon moral evolution, nothing more 
significant invites attention than that, through the operation 
of his conscience, man discovered that he was an animal. 
Reflection upon self, supposing it had come with aspirations 
tending heavenward and without self-condemnation, would, 
we may presume, have issued in the same discovery; but 
introspection having been the consequence of terror and 
