No Refuge but in Truth | Page 6

effort at improving the
community in a moral way. Beavers are wonderfully co-operative, but
they have shown no tendency to establish a church.
Of the science of ethics the foundation surely is our sense of the
difference between right and wrong, and of our obligation to choose the
right and avoid the wrong for our own sake and for the sake of the
society of which we are members and the character of which reacts
upon ourselves. This sense seems to me to be authoritative, whatever
its origin may be. Different conceptions of right and wrong may to
some extent prevail under different circumstances, national or of other
kinds, giving room for different ethical systems, as a comparison of the
ethics of the Gospel with those of Aristotle shows. Still, there is always
the sense of the difference between right and wrong and of the
necessity, individual and social, of embracing the first and eschewing
the second. If the Christian system is found by experience to show
itself essentially superior to all other systems and to satisfy individually
and socially, it is supreme, and is presumably the dictate of the author
of our being, if an author of our being there is.
The necessarian theory, which in this connection is still advanced or
implied, largely accepted as it has been, I cannot help thinking is really
traceable to an oversight. If in action there were only one factor, that is
to say, the motive, the action would seem to be necessary and to be
traceable in its origin apparently back to the nebula. But surely there
are two factors, the motive and the volition. Of the second factor in
actions which are matters of course we are not conscious; where there
is a conflict of motives or hesitation of any kind, we are. Huxley at one
time held that man was an automaton. I believe my illustrious friend
afterward receded from that position. Yet on the necessarian theory
automatons we must apparently be.
February 10th, 1907.

IV.
THE LIMIT OF EVOLUTION.
Your last correspondent on the subject of my letters treats the question
lightly. Perhaps he is young, enjoying the morning of life and thinking
little of its close. On the mind of a student of history is deeply
impressed the sadness of its page; the record of infinite misery and
suffering as well as depravity, all apparently to no purpose if the end is
to be a physical catastrophe. Comtism, while it bids us devote and
sacrifice ourselves to the future of humanity, can apparently hold out
nothing more.
I accept evolution, if it is the verdict of science as to the origin of
physical species, the human species included; though it certainly seems
strange that, the chances being so numerous as they are, no distinct ease
of evolution should have taken place within our ken. But the theory
apparently does not pretend to account for the development of man's
higher nature. That there is a gap in the continuity of development or
any supernatural intervention has never been suggested by me; but it
does appear that there is an ascent such as constitutes an essential
difference and calls for other than physical explanation.
In matter, said Tyndall, is the potentiality of all life. Matter is what we
discern by our bodily senses. What assurance have we that the account
of the universe and of our relations to it given us by our bodily senses
is exhaustive, or that the moral conscience may not have another
source?
Apart from anything more distinctly spiritual, where do we get the
faculty of idealization? Is it traceable to physical sense?
Unless the moral conscience has a source higher than mere physical
evolution, what is to deter a man in whom criminal propensities are
strong from indulging them so long as he can do so with impunity?
Eccelino had a lust of cruelty. Was he wrong in indulging it, so long as
he had the power, which he might have had, with common prudence, to
the end of his life?

I speak, as I have always said, from the ranks; and I am not presuming
to criticise Darwin's theory as an explanation of the origin and nature of
the physical man. But if the theory is to be carried farther, and we are to
be told that man's higher attributes and his moral conscience have no
source or authority other than physical evolution, we may fairly ask to
see our way.
March 17th, 1907.

V.
EXPLANATIONS.
Interest is evidently felt in questions which I have been permitted to
treat in The Sun, and after the notices and the queries which I have
received there are points on which I should like, if you will allow me,
to set myself right.
I. The leaning to