ETHICAL CONCLUSIONS 
Ethical living passes through three stages, the individual, 
the social and the religious. These are not mutually exclusive 
but represent the form of the summum honum most efficacious 
in each. 
In the individual stage natural selection is the determinant 
and self-preservation is the motive. Acts are good or bad as they 
tend to conserve the individual existence or fail to do so. Self- 
consciousness emerges from the animal consciousness clothed 
with the armor of protective instincts and impulses derived from 
natural selection. 
In the social stage conscious selection is the determinant and 
social development is the motive. Self has enlarged by continual 
accretions of mine to me. Family, clan, country and the great 
round world, successively fall under the conquest of the victori- 
ous self. Self-renunciation as the supreme act of selfishness 
becomes the way to the summum honum or the highest good of 
my universe. Acts are right or wrong as they serve society or 
not. 
In the religious stage the divine will is the determinant and 
self-absorption in the deity is the motive. Man becomes con- 
scious of self as part of a universal system. He feels partici- 
pation in the divine plan. He not only thinks God’s thoughts 
after him but he wills his acts with him. ^^Thy wiU be done” 
becomes his supreme desire. Nature and humanity become of 
one family with me, not because thay are mine but because they 
are God’s and I am God’s. Sympathy is universal. Sin is no 
longer rebellion, it is treason. To love God is joy and to love 
God is to love all created things, because we see as he sees. We 
have participated in creation as it was and is and shall be revealed. 
Nirvana^2 begins on earth. The kingdom of heaven is within 
you. Acts are not good or bad, right or wrong, but loj^al or 
disloyal as they conform to the suprema lex, the will of God, or 
fail to do so. 
The Buddhist conception of Nirvana is in one passage interpreted by Professor 
Herrick in these words: Nirvana is deliverance from evil. It is not a heaven of 
golden streets; it is not annihilation; but it is a state of unmixed satisfaction; it is 
permanence as contrasted with present fluctuations. 
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