I have attempted to show that animal development has not been an aimless drifting. Functions developed and organs arose and were perfected in a certain order. First the purely vegetative organs appeared, and the animal lived for digestion and reproduction; then came muscle and it brought with it nerve. But these were not enough; the brain had all the time been gradually improving, and now it becomes the dominant function to which all others are subordinated. The experiment was fairly tried. Mere digestion and reproduction are carried to about the highest perfection which can be expected of them in worms and mollusks. The bird tried what could be done with digestion ministering to locomotion guided by the very keenest sense-organs and controlled by no mean brain. Even this experiment was not a success. But one organ remained, the brain, and on its mental possibilities depend the future of the animal kingdom. Vegetative organs and muscle have been tried and found wanting.

We have followed hastily the development of mind. The mind began its career as the servant of digestion, recognizing and aiding to attain food. Action is at first mainly reflex. But conscious perception plays an ever more important part. The animal is at first guided by natural selection through the survival of the most suitable reflex actions, then by inherited tendencies, finally by its own conscious intelligence and will. The first motives are the appetites, but these are succeeded by ever higher motives as the perceptions become clearer and more subtile relations in environment are taken into account. Governed first purely by appetites, the will is ever more influenced by prudential considerations, and finally shows well-developed “natural affections.” It has set its face toward unselfishness.

Digestion and muscle, as well as mind, have persisted in man. He is not, cannot be, disembodied spirit. And in his mental life reflex action and instinct, appetite and prudence, are still of great importance. But the higher and supreme development of these powers could never have resulted in man. They might alone have produced a superior animal, never man. His mammalian structure found its logical and natural goal in family and social life. And even the lowest goal of family life is incompatible with pure selfishness, and as family life advanced to an ever higher grade it became the school of unselfishness and love. And social life had a similar effect.

Moreover, man as a social being early began to learn that he could claim something from his fellows, and that he owed something to them. If he refused to help others, they would refuse to help him. This was his first, very rude lesson in rights and duties. Love, duty, and right have ever since been the watchwords of his development and progress. We have not yet considered, and must for the present disregard, the value and efficiency of religion in aiding his advance. At present we emphasize only the historical fact that man has not become what he is by a higher development of the body, nor by giving free rein to appetite, nor yet by making the dictates of selfish prudence supreme. And if there is any such thing as continuity in history, such modes and aims of life, if now followed, would surely only brutalize him and plunge him headlong in degeneration. He must live for right, truth, love, and duty. In just so far as he makes any other aim in life supreme, or allows it to even rival these, he is sinking into brutality. This is the clear, unmistakable verdict of history, and we shall do well to heed it.

But granting all that can be claimed for this sequence, have not the lower forms whose anatomy we have sketched worm, fish, and bird halted at various points along this line of march? Yet they have evidently survived. And if they have found safe resting-places, cannot higher forms turn back and join them? In other words, is not degeneration easier than advance and just as safe? What is the result if an animal tries to return to a lower plane of life or refuses to take the next upward step? Generally extermination. The very classification of worms in a number of small isolated groups, which must once have been connected by a host of intermediate forms, is indisputable proof of most terrible extermination. They did not go forward, and the survivors are but an infinitesimal fraction of those which perished. Let us take an illustration where palaeontology can help us. The earth was at one time covered with marsupial mammals. Some advanced into placental forms. The great mass remained behind. And outside of Australia the opossums are the only survivors of them all. And this is only one example where a thousand could be given. Place is not long reserved for mere cumberers of the ground. There are so few exceptions to this statement that we might almost call it a law of biology.

Let us see how it fares with an animal which retreats to a lower plane of life. A worm, rather than seek its own food, becomes a parasite. It degenerates, but still is easily recognized as a worm. A crustacean tries the same experiment, though living outside of its host instead of in it. It sinks to a place even lower, if possible, than that of the parasitic worm. A locomotive form becomes sessile. It loses most of its muscles and the larger part of its nervous system; and even the digestive system, which it has made the goal of its existence, is inferior to that of its locomotive ancestors and relatives. But to the vertebrate these lowest depths of stagnation and degeneration are, as a rule, impossible. From true fish upward parasitism and sessile life are practically impossible. Here stagnation and degeneration mean, as a rule, extinction. Of all the relatives of vertebrates back to worms only the very aberrant lines of amphioxus and of the tunicata remain. Of the rest not a single survivor has yet been discovered. And yet what hosts of species must have peopled the sea. The primitive round-mouthed fishes have practically disappeared. The ganoids survive in a few species out of thousands. The amphibia of the carboniferous and the next period and the reptiles of the mesozoic have disappeared; only a few feeble degenerate remnants persist. And this was necessarily so. Each advancing form crowded hardest on those which occupied the same place and sought the same food, that is, the members of the same species. And the first to suffer from its competition were its own brethren. Death, rarely commuted into life imprisonment, is the verdict pronounced on all forms which will not advance. And does not the same law of advance or extinction apply to man? What is the record of successive civilizations but its verification?

Notice once more that as we ascend in the scale of development natural selection selects more unsparingly and the path to life narrows. It is a very easy matter for the lowest forms to get food. Indeed the plant sits still and its food comes to it. And the battle of brute force can be fought in a multitude of ways by mere strength, by activity, by offensive or defensive armor, or even by running into the mud and skulking. It is harder to gain knowledge, and yet many roads lead to an education. Colleges are by no means the only seats of education. And many totally uneducated men have college diplomas. And life is, after all, the great university, and here the sluggard fails and the plucky man with the poor “fit” often carries off the honors.

“But where shall wisdom be found?
And where is the place of understanding?
The gold and the crystal cannot equal it:
And the exchange of it shall not be for jewels of fine gold.
No mention shall be made of corals or of pearls:
For the price of wisdom is above rubies.”

And when it comes to righteousness there is only one right, and everything else is wrong. “Wide is the gate and broad is the way that leadeth to destruction, and many there be that go in thereat: Because strait is the gate and narrow is the way which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.” Therefore “strive to enter in at the strait gate.” And remember that “strive” means wrestle like one of the athletes in the old Olympic games.

“I saw also that the Interpreter took Christian again by the hand and led him into a pleasant place, where was built a stately palace beautiful to behold; at the sight of which Christian was greatly delighted. He saw also, upon the top thereof, certain persons walking, who were clothed all in gold. Then said Christian, May we go in thither?

“Then the Interpreter took him and led him up toward the door of the palace; and, behold, at the door stood a great company of men, as desirous to go in, but durst not. There also sat a man at a little distance from the door at a table-side, to take the name of him that should enter therein; he saw also that in the door-way stood many men in armour, to keep it, being resolved to do to the men that would enter what hurt and mischief they could. Now was Christian somewhat in amaze. At last, when every man started back for fear of the armed men, Christian saw a man of a very stout countenance come up to the man that sat there to write, saying, Set down my name, Sir; the which when he had done, he saw the man draw his sword, and put an helmet upon his head, and rush toward the door upon the armed men, who laid upon him with deadly force; but the man, not at all discouraged, fell to cutting and hacking most fiercely. So after he had received and given many wounds to those that attempted to keep him out, he cut his way through them all, and pressed forward into the palace, at which there was a pleasant voice heard from those that were within, even of those that walked upon the top of the palace saying:

“’Come in, come in;
Eternal glory thou shalt win.’

“So he went in, and was clothed in such garments as they.

“Then Christian smiled, and said, I think verily I know the
meaning of this.” Bunyan’s, Pilgrim’s Progress, .

If you wish to climb the Matterhorn many paths lead up the lower slopes, and a stumble here may cost you only a sprain. And I suppose that several paths lead to the base of the cone. But thence to the summit there is but one path, and a misstep means death. Pardon these quotations and illustrations. They are my only means of at all adequately presenting to you a scientific man’s conception of the meaning of the struggle for life. The laws of evolution are written in blood and bear the death penalty. For

“Life is not as idle ore,
But iron dug from central gloom,
And heated hot with burning fears,
And dipt in baths of hissing tears,
And battered with the shocks of doom
To shape and use.”

There would seem therefore to be going on a process of natural selection. Natural selection seems to select more unsparingly and the struggle for life or even existence to grow fiercer as we advance from lower forms to higher in the animal kingdom.

But the theory which we have agreed to accept teaches us that these survivors are those which or who have conformed to their environment and that they have survived because of their conformity. And what do we mean by environment? And does not man modify his environment? Certainly he changes by irrigation a desert into a garden. He carries water against its tendency to the hill-top. But he has learned to do this only by studying the laws which govern the motions of fluids and rigorously obeying them. He must carry his water in strong pipes and take it from some higher point, or must use heat or some means to furnish the force to drive it to the higher point. He cannot change a single iota of the law, and gains control of the elements only by obedience to their laws. Electricity is man’s best servant as long as he respects its laws, but it kills him who disobeys them. But does not man make his own surroundings in social life? He merely enters upon a new mode of life; and if this new mode be in conformity with the eternal forces and laws of environment man prospers in this new mode of life and conforms still more closely.

There is, indeed, but one environment, but the lower animal comes in contact with, and is affected by, but a small portion of its elements. Form and color were in the world before the animal had developed an eye, but up to this time these could have but little effect on animal life. Light vibrations were present in ether long before the animal by responding to them made them any part of its own true environment. There is vastly more in environment than man has yet discovered, and he will discover these elements only by obedience to their laws.

Environment includes ultimately all the forces and elements which go to make up our world or universe. It is an exceedingly general term. I might say that under the environment of certain wheels, springs, and spindles, which we call a Jacquard loom, silk threads become a ribbon worthy of a queen. Is Nature and environment only a huge divine loom to weave man and something higher yet? One great difference is evident. Under normal conditions the silk must become a ribbon. But protoplasm can fail to conform and become waste. Environment is a very hard word to define, and our views concerning it may differ.

One thing, however, seems to me clear and evident. If each successive stage in the ascending series is selected or survives on account of its conformity to environment there must be some element or power, something or somewhat in environment specially corresponding in some way to, or suited to drawing out, the characteristic of this ascending stage on account of which it survives. The forces and elements of environment make and work against those at each stage who wander from the right path, and for those who follow it. And thus natural selection arises as the total result of the combined working of all these forces. They all unite in one resultant working along a certain line, and natural selection is the effect of this resultant. In the stage represented by hydra the forces of environment combine in a resultant which works for digestion and reproduction and the best development of their organs. But as the animal changes he comes into a new relation or occupies a new position in respect to these forces. New elements in the old environment are beginning to press upon him. And the resultant changes accordingly. He may be compared to a steamer at sea which raises a sail. The wind has been blowing for hours, but the sail gives it a new hold on the ship. Steam and wind now combine in a new resultant of forces. From worms upward environment manifests itself through natural selection as a power working for muscular force and brute strength or activity.

But soon natural selection ceases to select on the ground of brute force. After a time environment proves to be a power making for shrewdness. And when the mammal has appeared the resultant of the forces of environment impels more and more toward unselfishness, and when man has appeared environment proves to be a “power, not ourselves, that makes for righteousness.” But what shall we say of an environment which unmasks itself at last as a power making for intelligence, unselfishness, and righteousness? Someone may answer it is a host of chemical and physical forces bringing about very high ends. That is very true, but is it the whole truth? The thinking man must ask, How did it come about, and why is it that all these forces work together for such high moral and intelligent ends?

We face, therefore, the question, Can an environment which proves finally and ultimately to be a power not ourselves making for righteousness and unselfishness be purely material and mechanical? Or must there be in or behind it something spiritual? Shall we best call environment, in its highest manifestation, “it” or “him?”

The old argument of Socrates, as on the last day of his life he sits discoursing with his friends, still holds good. He is discussing the same old question, whether there is anything more than force, material, mechanism in the world. He says that one might assign as “the cause why I am sitting here that my body is composed of bones and muscles; that the bones are solid and separate, and that the muscles can be contracted and extended, and are all inclosed in the flesh and skin; and that the bones, being jointed, can be drawn by the muscles, and so I can move my legs as you see; and that this is the reason why I am sitting here. But by the dog, these bones and muscles would long ago have carried me to Megara or Booetia, moved by my opinion of what was best, if I had not thought it more right and honorable to submit to the sentence pronounced by the state than to run away from it. To call such things causes is absurd. For there is a great difference between the cause and that without which the cause would not produce its effect.”

If there is no intelligence or love of truth in the cause, how can there be anything higher in the effect? And if Socrates had been only bone and muscle, he ought to have run away.

Our problem stands somewhat as follows: We have given protoplasm, a strange substance of marvellous capacities, which we call functions, and possessing a power of developing into beings of ever higher grades of organization. Environment proves to be a combination of forces working for the higher development of functions in a certain orderly sequence. And every lower function in the ascending line demands the development of the next higher. Digestion demands muscle, and muscle nerve, and nerve brain. We shall soon see that mammalian structure had to culminate in the family, and the family demands unselfishness and obedience. Environment therefore proves from the beginning to have been unceasingly working for the highest end; never, even temporarily, merely for the lower. For we have seen that environment works most unsparingly against those who, having taken certain of the steps in the ascending path, fail to continue therein.

But in order to attain this highest end for which it has always been working, an immense number of subsidiary ends have had to be attained. These are not merely digestion and brain, but a host of others: e.g., in vertebrates, vertebrae of the right substance, position, form, arrangement, and union. And in the ascending line, for whose highest forms it has continually worked, the difficulties of attaining each subsidiary end have been successively solved, and through this host of subsidiary ends the animal kingdom has advanced straight to its goal of intelligence and righteousness. Now the whole process is a grand argument for design. But I would not emphasize the process so much as the end attained. This especially, when attained by conformity to that environment, demands more than mere mindless atoms in or behind that environment. Can we call the ultimate power which makes for righteousness “it?” Can we call it less than “Him, in whom we live and move and have our being?”

The history of life is a grand drama. “Paradise Lost” and Shakespeare’s plays are but fragments of it. But without intelligence they could never have been composed; without a choice of means and ends they could never have been placed upon the stage. Does the plot of this grander drama of evolution demand no intelligence in its ultimate cause and producer? Is the succession of steps, each succeeding the other in such order as to lead to truth and right and continual progress toward a spiritual goal, is this plot possible without a great composer who has seen the end from the beginning? Could it ever have been executed upon the stage of the world, and perhaps of the universe, without an executing will?

Now I freely grant you that this is no mathematical demonstration. Natural science does not deal in demonstrations, it rests upon the doctrine of probabilities; just as we have to order our whole lives according to this doctrine. Its solution of a problem is never the only conceivable answer, but the one which best fits and explains all the facts and meets the fewest objections. The arguments for the existence of a personal God are far stronger than those in favor of any theory of evolution. But we very rightly test the former arguments, indefinitely more rigidly and severely, just because our very life hangs on them. On the other hand, we should not reject them as useless, because they are not of an entirely different kind from those on which all the actions and beliefs of our common daily life are based. There is a scepticism which is merely a credulity of negations. This also we should avoid.

We have considered a few of the reasons for thinking that, with the material, there must be something spiritual in environment, that if the woof is material the warp is God. Here we need not delay long. Blank atheism seems to be at present unpopular and generally regarded as unscientific. The so-called philosophic materialism of the present day seems to be in general far nearer to pantheism than to the old form of materialism which recognized only atoms and mechanism. Atheism as a power to deform the lives of men has, for the present, lost its hold, and even agnosticism is respectful. The materialism against which we have to struggle is not that of the school, but of the shop, of society, of life. There are comparatively few now who avow a system of philosophy making mindless atoms their first cause.

But there is a far grosser, more deadly materialism of the heart and will. It sits unrebuked in the front pews of our churches and controls alike church and parish, caucus and legislature. It calls on us all to fall down and worship, promising the world if we obey, the cross if we refuse. And we bow to it; and that is all it asks, for a nod on our part makes us its slaves. It is the idolatry of money, position, shrewdness, learning in one word, of success. It takes all the strength out of our morality, loyalty and obedience to God out of our religion, and makes cowards and liars of us, who should be heroes. It makes our religion a byword with honest unbelievers. And if they are honest scientific minds, waiting for evidence of the practical value of our religion, why should they believe, when we live so successfully down to the religion which we would scorn to openly profess? Our fathers may have been narrow or straight-laced; they were not cross-eyed from trying to keep one eye on God and the other on the main chance. What is the use of whispering, “Lord, Lord,” Sundays, if we shout, “Oh, Baal, hear us,” all the rest of the week. Let us at least be honest, and “if Baal be god, follow him,” and avow it. And worst, and most hideous, of all, we are not so much hypocrites as self-deceived. Let us not forget the old Greek doctrine of Ate, goddess of judicial blindness, sent down only upon those who were living the unpardonable sin of indifference.

But supposing that there is in environment something more and other than material, can we possibly know anything about it?

I am in a boat near the mouth of a river. The boat is tossed by the waves, driven by currents of wind, and now and then temporarily turned by eddies. I seem to look out upon a chaos of apparently conflicting forces. But all the time the wind and tide are sweeping me homeward. Now the wind, which sometimes indeed does shift, and the great tidal wave are steadily bearing me in a certain direction, though wave and eddy and gust may often make this appear doubtful to me. So, underneath all waves and eddies of environment, there is a great tidal wave, bearing man steadily onward; and I gain a certain amount of valid knowledge of environment from the direction in which it is bearing me.

Let us change the illustration. Man survives as all his ancestors have survived before him, through conformity to environment. Environment has therefore during ages past been continually making impressions upon him. And he can draw valid inferences concerning the one power, which must underlie the apparent host of forces of environment, from the impressions which these have left upon the structure of his mind and character. By studying himself he gains valid knowledge of what is deepest in environment. For man is the most completely and closely conformed thereto of all living beings.

But man is a religious being. This is a fact which demands explanation just as much as bone and muscle. Now no evolutionist would believe that the eye could ever have developed without the stimulus of light acting upon the cells of the skin. Place the animal in darkness and the eye becomes rudimentary and disappears. Could a visual organ for seeing moral and religious truth have ever originated in the mind of man had there been no corresponding pulsation and thrill of a corresponding reality in environment? Is not the one development just as improbable or inconceivable as the other?

And this is the reason that, when man awakened to himself and his own powers, he knew that there was and must be a God. “Pass over the earth,” says Plutarch; “you may discover cities without walls, without literature, without monarchs, without palaces and wealth; where the theatre and the school are not known; but no man ever saw a city without temples and gods, where prayers and oaths and oracles and sacrifices were not used for obtaining pardon or averting evil.” Given man and environment as they are, and a belief in God is a necessary result. But you may ask, if we are to worship a personal God, why might not a conscious and religious hydra, with equal right, worship an infinite stomach, and the annelid a god of mere brute force?

There stands in Florence a magnificent statue by Michel Angelo. A human figure is only partially hewn out of the stone. He never finished it. If you could have seen the master hewing the chips with hasty, impatient blows from the shapeless block, you would have been tempted to say that he was but a stonecutter, and but a hasty workman at that. Even now we do not know exactly what form and expression he would have given to the still unfinished head. But no one can examine it and hesitate to pronounce it a grand work of a master-mind. In any manifestly incomplete work you must judge the purpose and character and powers of the workman or artist by its highest possibilities, just so far as you have any reason to believe that these possibilities will be realized. You must look at the rudely outlined heroic human figure in the block of stone, not at the rough unfinished pedestal, if you would know Michel Angelo. So in the hydra and the annelid you must look at the possibilities of the nervous system before you or he think that digestion and muscle are all.

Once more the highest powers dawn far down in the animal kingdom. There are traces of mind in the amoeba, and of unselfishness in the lower mammals. If there were a goal of human development higher and other than unselfishness, wisdom, and love, we should have seen traces of it before this. But have we found the faintest sign of any such? Moreover, remember that a function continues to develop about as long as it shows the capacity for development. And during that period environment is a power making for its higher development. But is there any limit to the possible development of the three mental activities mentioned above? I can see none. Then must we not expect that environment will always make for these? And will environment ever manifest itself to man as the seat or instrument of a power possessing higher faculties other than these? Man must worship a personal God of wisdom, unselfishness, and love, or cease to worship. The latter alternative he never yet has been able to take, and society survive under its domination. So I at least am compelled to read the finding of biological history.

But let us grant for the sake of argument that man contains still undeveloped germs of faculties capable of perceiving and attaining something as much higher than wisdom and love as these are higher than brute force. You will answer, this is not only inconceivable, it is impossible. Still let us grant the possibility. We notice, first of all, that it is against the whole course of evolution that these faculties should be other than mental, and what we class under powers pertaining to our personality. For ages past evidently, and no less really from the very beginning, evolution has worked for the body only as a perfect vehicle of mind, and for this as leading to will and character. And human development has led, and ever more tends, as Mr. Drummond has shown, to the arrest, though not the degeneration, of the body. It is to remain at the highest possible stage of efficiency as the servant of mind. These higher powers will thus be mental and personal powers. And how has any and every advance to higher capabilities been attained in the animal kingdom? Merely by the most active possible exercise of the next lower power. This is proven by the sequence of physical and mental functions. We shall attain, therefore, any higher mental capacities only by the continual practice of wisdom and love. That is our only path to something higher, if higher there shall ever be. But if we find that the God of our environment is a God of something higher than love and righteousness, will these cease to be characteristics of his nature and essence? Not at all.

I have learned, perhaps, to know my father as a plain citizen. If I later find that he is a king and statesman, with powers and mental capacities of which I have never dreamed, do I therefore from that time cease to think of him as wise and kind and good? Not in the least. I only trust his love and wisdom as guide of my little life all the more. And shall not the same be true of God though he be king of all worlds and ages? It becomes unwise and wrong to worship God as the God of might only when we have found that he is a God also of something higher and nobler, of love; and after we have perceived this fully and worship him as love, we rest in the arms of his infinite power.

But now that the work has gone thus far, we can see that all development must take place along personal, spiritual lines; and are compelled to believe in a spiritual cause who knew the end from the beginning. And man’s farther progress depends upon his conformity to this spiritual environment. And what is conformity to the personal element in our environment but likeness to him? This is my only possible mode of conformity to a person to become like him in word, action, thought, and purpose, and finally in all my being. Very far from a close resemblance we still are. But we are more like him than primitive man was; and our descendants will resemble him far more closely than we. And thus man, conscious of his environment, and that means capable of knowing something about God, knows at least what God requires of him, namely, righteousness, love, and likeness to himself; or, as the old heathen seer expressed it, “to do justly, love mercy, and walk humbly before God.” Man is and must be a religious being. And he conforms consciously. Thus to be more like God he must know more about him, and to know more about him he must become more like him. The two go hand in hand, and by mutual reaction strengthen each other. I will not enter into the most important question of all, whether we can ever really know a person unless we have some love for him. The facts of evolution seem to me to admit of but one interpretation, that of Augustine: “Thou hast formed me for thee, O Lord, and my restless spirit finds no rest but in thee.” Granted, therefore, a personal God in and behind environment, however dimly perceived, and conformity to environment means god-likeness; for conformity to a person can mean nothing less than likeness to him.

Some of you must, all of you should, have read Professor Huxley’s “Address on Education.” In it he says, “It is a very plain and elementary truth that the life, the fortune, and the happiness of every one of us, and, more or less, of those who are connected with us, do depend upon our knowing something of the rules of a game infinitely more difficult and complicated than chess. It is a game which has been played for unknown ages, every man and woman of us being one of the two players in a game of his or her own. The chess-board is the world, the pieces are the phenomena of the universe, the rules of the game are what we call the laws of Nature. The player on the other side is hidden from us. We know that his play is always fair, just, and patient. But also we know, to our cost, that he never overlooks a mistake, or makes the smallest allowance for ignorance. To the man who plays well the highest stakes are paid with that sort of overflowing generosity with which the strong shows delight in strength. And one who plays ill is checkmated without haste, but without remorse.

“My metaphor,” he continues, “will remind some of you of the famous picture in which Retzsch has depicted Satan playing at chess with man for his soul. Substitute for the mocking fiend in that picture a calm, strong angel, who is playing for love, as we say, and would rather lose than win and I should accept it as an image of human life."

This is a marvellous illustration, and in general as true as it is beautiful and grand. But that “calm, strong angel who is playing for love, as we say, and would rather lose than win,” is certainly a very strange antagonist. Is it, after all, possible that our clear-eyed scientific man has altogether misunderstood the game? Is not the “calm, strong angel” more probably our partner? Certainly very many things point that way. And who are our antagonists? Look within yourself and you will always find at least a pair ready to take a hand against you, to say nothing of the possibilities of environment. “Rex régis rebellis.” Our partner is trying by every method, except perhaps by “talking across the board,” to teach us the laws and methods of this great game. And calls and signals are always allowable. The game is not finished in one hand; he gives us a second and third, and repeats the signals, and never misleads. Only when we carelessly or obstinately refuse to learn, and wilfully lose the game beyond all hope, does he leave us to meet our losses as best we may.

Let us carry the illustration a step farther. Who knows that the game was, or could be, at first taught without talking across the board? I can find nothing in science to compel such a belief, many things render it improbable. Grant a personality in environment to which personality in man is to conform and gain likeness. Environment can act on the digestive and muscular systems through mere material. But how can personality in environment act on personality in man except by personal contact or by symbols easy of comprehension according to its own laws? Some method of attaining acquaintance at least we should certainly expect.

But some of you may ask, How can any theory of evolution guarantee that anything of the present shall survive in the future? It is continually changing and destroying former types. The old order of everything changes and passes away, giving place to the new. But is this the whole truth? Evolution is a radical process, but we must never forget that it is also, and at the same time, exceedingly conservative. The cell was the first invention of the animal kingdom, and all higher animals are and must be cellular in structure. Our tissues were formed ages on ages ago; they have all persisted. Most of our organs are as old as worms. All these are very old, older than the mountains, and yet I cannot doubt that they must last as long as man exists. Indeed, while Nature is wonderfully inventive of new structures, her conservatism in holding on to old ones is still more remarkable. In the ascending line of development she tries an experiment once exceedingly thorough, and then the question is solved for all time. For she always takes time enough to try the experiment exhaustively. It took ages to find how to build a spinal column or brain, but when the experiment was finished she had reason to be, and was, satisfied. And if this is true of bodily organs we should expect that the same law would hold good when the animal development gradually passes over into the spiritual. And what is human history but the record of moral and religious experiments, and their success or failure according as the experimenters conformed to the laws of the spiritual forces with which they had to do?

We need not fear that our old fundamental beliefs will be lost. Their very age shows that they have been thoroughly tested in the great experiment of human history and found sure. Modified they may be; they will be used for higher purposes and the building of better characters than ours. They will not be lost or discarded. We too often think of nature as building like man, with huge scaffoldings, which must later be torn down and destroyed. But in the forest the only scaffolding is the heart of oak.

We have seen that the sequence of functions in animal development has culminated in man’s rational, moral nature. He alone has the clear perception of the reality of right, truth, and duty. The pursuit of these has made him what he is. His advance, if there is any continuity in history, depends upon his making these the ruling motives and aims of his life. He must continually grow in righteousness and unselfishness, if he is not to degenerate and give place to some other product of evolution. Moreover, as these moral faculties are capable of indefinite, if not infinite, development, they must dominate his life through a future of indefinite duration. For the length of the period of dominance of a function has always been proportional to the capacity of that function for future development. These can never, so far as we can see, be superseded, for no rival to them can be discovered. We have found in them the culmination of the sequence of functions.

We have attempted to show in this lecture that reversal of this grand sequence has always led to degeneration, or, in higher forms, far more frequently, to extinction. As we ascend, natural selection works more, rather than less, unsparingly. And as advance depends upon conformity to environment, and as the highest forms must be regarded as therefore most completely conformed, we gain our most adequate knowledge of environment when we study it as working especially for these. For these have been from the very beginning its far-off, chief aim and goal. Viewed from this standpoint, environment proves to be a host of interacting forces uniting in a resultant “power, not ourselves, that makes for righteousness,” and unselfishness.

Inasmuch as man’s rational moral nature, his personality, is the result of the last and longest step toward and in conformity to environment, these powers correspond to that which is at the same time highest, and deepest, and most fundamental in that environment. This power which makes for righteousness is therefore to be regarded as personal and spiritual rather than material. It is God immanent in nature. And it is mainly to this personal and spiritual element in his environment that man is in the future to more completely conform. Conformity to this element in man’s environment does not so much result in life as it is life; failure to conform is death. And the pressure of environment upon man, compelling him to choose between life through conformity and non-conformity with death, can be most naturally and adequately explained as the expression of his will. We know what he requires of us.

Our knowledge of him is very incomplete, but may be valid as far as it extends. And it would seem to be valid, for it has been tested by ages of experiment. The results of this grand experiment have been summed up in man’s fundamental religious beliefs. And farther knowledge will be gained by more complete obedience to the requirements already known. The evidence, that these fundamental religious beliefs will persist, is of the same character as that upon which rests our belief in the persistence of cells and tissues. The one is rooted in the structure of our minds; the other, in the structure of our bodies. But, after all, only will can act upon will, and personality upon personality. It remains for us to examine how man was compelled by his very structure to develop a new element in his environment, conformed indeed to the laws of his old environment, but better fitted to draw out the moral and spiritual side of his nature. And in connection with this study we may hope to gain some new light on the laws of conformity.