No Refuge but in Truth | Page 6

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 orthodoxy with which I am gently reproached goes not beyond a conviction, drawn from the study not of theology but of history, that of all the types of character hitherto produced the Christian type, founded on a belief in the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man, appears to be the happiest and the best. At its birth it encountered alien and hostile influences; Alexandrian theosophy, Oriental asceticism, Byzantine imperialism. Later it encountered the worst influence of all, that of theocracy