u8 



SCIENCE. 



depends on the close correspondence between hfs own 

 faculties and those which are reflected in creation, and 

 on his power of recognizing that correspondence as the 

 highest result of invest'gaHon. The lower animals do 

 reasonable things without the gift of reason, and things, 

 as we have seen, often involving a very distant foresight, 

 without having themselves any knowledge of the future. 

 They work for that which is to be, without seeing or 

 feeling anything beyond that which is. They enjoy, but 

 they cannot understand. Reason is, as it were, brooding 

 over them and working through them, whilst at the same 

 time it is wanting in them. Between the faculties they 

 possess, therefore, and the governing principles of the 

 system in which they live and under which they serve, 

 there is, as it were, a vacant space. It is no anomaly 

 that this space should be occupied by a Being with high- 

 er powers. On the contrary, it would be the greatest of 

 all anomalies if it were really vacant. It would be 

 strange indeed if there were no link connecting, more 

 closely than any of the lower animals can connect, the 

 Mind that is in creation with the mind that 'is in the 

 creature. This is the place occupied by Man's Reason — 

 Reason not outside of, but in the creature — working not 

 only through him, but also in him— Reason conscious of 

 itself, and conscious of the relation in which it stands to 

 that measureless Intelligence of which the Universe is 

 full. In occupying this place, Man fills up, in some 

 measure at least, what would otherwise be wanting to 

 the continuity of things ; and in proportion as he is cap- 

 able of development — in proportion as his faculties are 

 expanded — he does fill up this place more and more. 



There is nothing, then, really anomalous or at variance 

 with the unity of Nature, either in the special elevation 

 of the powers which belong to Man, or in the fact that 

 they start from small beginnings and are capable of being 

 developed to an extent, which, though certainly not in- 

 finite is at least indefinite. That which is rarely excep- 

 tional, and indeed absolutely singular in Man, is the per- 

 sistent tendency of his development to take a wrong direc- 

 tion. In all other creatures it is a process which follows 

 a certain and determined law, going straight to a definite, 

 consistent, and intelligible end. In Man alone it is a 

 process which is prone to take a perverted course, tend- 

 ing not merely to arrest his progress, but to lead him 

 back along descending paths to results of utter degrada- 

 tion and decay. I am not now affirming that this has 

 been the actual course of Man as a species or as a race 

 when that course is considered as a whole. But that it 

 is often the course of individual men, and that it has been 

 the course of particular races and generations of men in 

 the history of the world, is a fact which cannot be de- 

 nied. The general law mav be a law of progress ; but 

 it is certain that this law is liable not only to arrest but 

 to reversal. In truth it is never allowed to operate unop- 

 posed, or without heavy deductions from its work. For 

 there is another law ever present, and ever working in 

 the reverse direction. Running alongside, as it were, of 

 the tendency to progress, there is the other tendency to 

 retrogression. Between these two there is a war which 

 never ceases, — sometimes the one, sometimes the other, 

 seeming to prevail. And even when the better and 

 higher tendency is in the ascendant, its victory is quali- 

 fied and abated by its great opponent. For just as in 

 physics the joint operation of two forces upon any mov- 

 ing body results in a departure from the course it would 

 have taken if it had been subject to one alone, so in the 

 moral world almost every step in the progress of man- 

 kind deviates more or less from the right direction. And 

 every such deviation must and does increase, until much 

 that had been gained is again lost, in new developments 

 of corruption and of vice. The recognition of this fact 

 does not depend on any particular theory as to the nature 

 or origin of moral distinctions. It is equally clear, whether 

 we judge according to the crudest standard of the Utili- 

 tarian scheme, or according to the higher estimates of an 



Independent Morality. Viewed under either system, the 

 course of development in Man cannot be reconciled with 

 the ordinary course of Nature, or wi f h the genera! law 

 under which all other creatures fulfill the conditions of 

 their being. 



It is no mere failure to realize aspirations which are 

 vague and imaginary that constitutes this exceptional 

 element in the history and in the actual condition of 

 mankind. That which constitutes the terrible anomaly 

 of his case admits of perfectly clear and specific defini- 

 tion. Man has been and still is a constant prey to ap- 

 petites whi.~h are morbid — to opinions which are irra- 

 tional, to imaginations wlvch are horrible, and to prac- 

 tices which are destructive. The prevalence and the 

 power of these in a great variety of forms and of degrees' 

 is a fact with which we are familiar — so familiar, indeed, 

 that we fail to be duly impressed with the strangeness 

 and the mystery which really belong to it. All savage 

 races are bowed and bent under the yoke of their own 

 perverted instincts — instincts which generally in their 

 root and origin have an obvious utility, but which in 

 their actual development are the source of miseries with- 

 out number and without end. Some of the most horrible 

 perversions which are prevalent among savages have no 

 counterpart among any other created beings, and when 

 judged by the barest standard of utility, place Man im- 

 measurably below the level of the beasts. We are 

 accustomed to say of many of the habits of savage life 

 that they are " brutal." But this is entirely to misrepre- 

 sent the place which they really occupy in the system of 

 Nature. None of the brutes have any such perverted 

 dispositions; none of them are ever subject to the de- 

 structive operation of such habits as are common among 

 men. And this contrast is all the more remarkable when 

 we consider that the very worst of these habits affect 

 conditions of life which the lower animals share with us, 

 and in which any departure from those natural laws 

 which they universally obey, must necessarily produce, 

 and do actually produce, consequences so destructive as 

 to endanger the very existence of the race. Such are all 

 those conditions of life affecting the relation of the sexes 

 which are common to all creatures, and in which Man 

 alone exhibits the widest and most hopeless divergence 

 from the order of Nature. 



It fell in the way of Malthus in his celebrated 

 work on Population to search in the accounts 

 of travelers for those causes which operate, in 

 different countries of the world, to check the 

 progress, and to limit the numbers of Mankind. 

 Foremost among these is vice, and foremost among the 

 vices is that most unnatural one, of the cruel treatment 

 of women. " In every part of the world," says Malthus, 

 " one of the most general characteristics of the savage 

 is to despise and degrade the female sex. Among most 

 of the tribes in America, their condition is so peculiarly 

 grievous, that servitude is a name too mild to describe 

 their wretched state. A wife is no better than a beast 

 of burden. While the man passes his days in idleness 

 or amusement, the woman is condemned to incessant 

 toil. Tasks are imposed upon her without mercy, and 

 services are received without complacence or gratitude, 

 There are some districts in America where this state 

 of degradation has been so severely felt that mothers 

 have destroyed their female infants, to deliver them at 

 once from a life in which they were doomed to such a 

 miserable slavery." 1 It is impossible to find for this 

 most vicious tendency any place among the unities of 

 Nature. There is nothing like it among the beasts. 

 With them the equality of the sexes, as regards all the 

 enjoyments as well as all the work of life, is the universal 

 rule. And among those of them in which social instincts 

 have been specially implanted, and whose system of 

 polity are like the most civilized polities of men, the fe- 

 males of the race are treated with a strange mixture of 

 love, of loyalty, and of devotion. If, indeed, we consider 



