SCIENCE. 



117 



ence to other persons or to other powers. This 

 higher Authority may be nothing- but the rules and 

 customs ot a rude tribe ; or it may be the will of an ab- 

 solute sovereign ; or it may be the accumulated and ac- 

 cepted traditions of a race ; or it may be the laws of a 

 great civilized community ; or it may be the Authority, 

 still higher, of that Power which is known or believed to 

 be supreme in Nature. But in all and in each of these 

 cases, the sense of obligation is inseparably attached to 

 obedience to some Authority, the legitimacy or rightful- 

 ness of which is not itself a question but a fact. 



It is true, indeed, that these rightful Authorities, which 

 are enthroned in Nature, are fortified by power to en- 

 force their commands, and to punish violations of the 

 duty of obedienee. It is true, therefore, that from the 

 first moments of our existence the sense of obligation is 

 re-inforced by the fear of punishment. And yet we 

 know, both as a matter of internal consciousness, and 

 as a matter of familiar observation in others, that this 

 sense of obligation is not only separable from the tear of 

 punishment, but is even sharply contra-distinguished 

 from it. Not only is the sense of obligation powerful in 

 cases where the fear of punishment is impossible, but in 

 direct proportion as the fear of punishment mixes or 

 prevails, the moral character of an act otherwise good is 

 diminished or destroyed. The fear of punishment and 

 the hope of reward are, indeed, auxiliary forces which 

 cannot be dispensed with in society. But we feel that 

 complete goodness and perfect virtue would dispense 

 with them altogether, or rather, perhaps, it would be 

 more correct to say, that the hope of reward would be 

 merged and lost as a separate motive in that highest 

 condition of mind in which the performance of duty be- 

 comes its own reward, because of the satisfaction it 

 gives to the Moral Sense, and because of the love 

 borne to that Authority whom we feel it our duty to 

 obey. 



The place occupied by this instinctive sentiment in the 

 equipment of our nature is as obvious as it is important. 

 The helplessness of infancy and of childhood is not 

 greater than would be the helplessness of the race if the 

 disposition to accept and to obey Authority were want- 

 ing in us. It is implanted in our nature only because it 

 is one of the first necessities of our life, and a fundamen- 

 tal condition of the development of our powers. All Na- 

 ture breathes the spirit of authority, and is full of the ex- 

 ercise of command. " Thou shalt," or " Thou shalt 

 not," an. words continually on her lips, and all her in- 

 junctions and all her prohibitions are backed by the most 

 tremendous sanctions. Moreover, the most tremendous 

 of these sanctions are often those which are not audibly 

 proclaimed, but those which come upon us most gradu- 

 ally, most imperceptibly, and after the longest lapse 

 of time. Some of the most terrible diseases which 

 afflict humanity are known to be the results of vice> and 

 what has long been known of some of those diseases is 

 more and more reasonably suspected of many others. 

 The truth is, that we are born into a system of things in 

 which every act carries with it, by indissoluble ties, a 

 long train of consequences reaching to the most distant 

 future, and which for the whole course of time affect our 

 own condition, the condition of other men, and even the 

 conditions of external nature. And yet we cannot see 

 those consequences beyond the shortest way, and very 

 often those which lie nearest are in the highest degree 

 deceptive as an index to ultimate results. Neither pain 

 nor pleasure can be accepted as a guide. With the 

 lower animals, indeed, these, for the most part, tell the 

 truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Ap- 

 petite is all that the creature has, and in the gratification 

 of it the highest law of the animal being is fulfilled. In 

 Man, too, appetite has its own mdispensable function to 

 discharge. But it is a lower function, and amounts 

 to nothing more than that of furnishing to Reason a few 

 of the primary data on which it has to work — a few and 



a few only. Physical pain is indeed one of the threaten- 

 ings of natural authority ; and physical pleasures is one 

 of its rewards. But neither the one nor the other forms 

 more than a mere fraction of that awful and imperial 

 code under which we live. It is the code of an everlast- 

 ing Kingdom, and of a jurisprudence which endures 

 throughout all generations. It is a code which continu- 

 ally imposes on Man the abandonment of pleasure, and 

 the endurance of pain, whenever and wherever the higher 

 purposes of its law demand of him the sacrifice. Nor 

 has this spirit of Authority ever been without its witness 

 in the human Spirit, or its response in the human Will. 

 On the contrary, in all ages of the world, dark and dis- 

 torted as have been his understandings of Authority, 

 Man has been prone to acknowledge it, and to admit it 

 as the basis of obligation and the rule of duty. This, at 

 all events, is one side of his ^character, and it is univer- 

 sally recognized as the best. 



There is no difficulty, then, in seeing the place which 

 this instinct holds in the unity of Nature. It belongs to 

 that class of gifts, universal in the world, which enable all 

 living things to fulfill their part in the order of Nature, and 

 to discharge the functions which belong to it. It is when 

 we pass from a review of those instincts and powers with 

 which Man has been endowed, to a review of their actual 

 working and results, that we for the first time encounter 

 facts which are wholly exceptional, and which it is, ac- 

 cordingly, most difficult to reconcile with the unities of 

 Nature. This difficulty does not lie in the mere existence 

 of a Being with powers which require for their perfection 

 a long process of development. There is no singularity 

 in this. On the contrary, it is according to the usual 

 course and the universal analogy of Nature. Develop- 

 ment in different forms, through a great variety of stages 

 and at different rates of progress, is the most familiar ot 

 all facts in creation. In the case of some of the lower ani- 

 mals, and especially in the case of many among the lowest, 

 the process of development is carried to an extent which 

 may almost be said to make the work of creation visi- 

 ble. There are numberless creatures which pass through 

 separate stages of existence having no likeness whatever 

 to each other. In passing through these stages, the same 

 organism differs from itself in foim, in structure, in the 

 food on which it subsists, and even in the very element in 

 which it breathes and lives. Physiologists tell us that 

 changes having a mysterious and obscure analogy with 

 these pass over the embryo of all higher animals be- 

 fore their birth. But after birth the development of 

 every individual among the higher orders of creation is 

 limited to those changes which belong to growth, to ma- 

 turity, and decay. Man shares in these changes, but in 

 addition to those he undergoes a development which 

 effects him not merely as an individual, but as a species 

 and a race. This is purely a development of mind, of 

 character, and of knowledge, giving by accumulation 

 from generation to generation increased command over 

 the resources of Nature, and a higher understanding of 

 the enjoyments and of the aims of life. 



It is true, indeed, that this is a kind of development 

 which is itself exceptional — that is to say, it is a kind of 

 development of which none of the lower animals are sus- 

 ceptible, and which therefore separates widely between 

 them and Man. But although it is exceptional with re- 

 ference to the lower orders of creation it is 

 very important to observe that it constitutes no 

 anomaly when it is regarded in connection with 

 creation as a whole. On the contrary, it is the natural 

 and necessary result of the gift of reason and of all 

 those mental powers which are its servants or allies. 

 But all Nature is full of these — so full, that every little 

 bit and fragment of its vast domain overflows with mat- 

 ter of inexhaustible interest to that one only Being who 

 has the impulse of inquiry and the desire to know. This 

 power or capacity in every department of Nature of fix- 

 ing the attention and of engrossing the interest of Man, 



