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But it is the same kind of suicide that the soldier commits in storming a battery, going himself to certain death that others may survive, or that a union may endure.

Human society is no less an organism than is a pack of wolves or a hive of bees. There is among men to-day the same specialization and differentiation of task and power and function as we saw among the cells of the simple hydra. Men are not independent, but interdependent; and the laws of the biological efficiency of organisms apply to our civilizations, as to our bodies. We have seen that these laws require of the individual two things-the discharge of two kinds of duties, the one egoistic, the other altruistic;-he must provide for his own welfare and for the welfare of his fellows. And if these two clash, his duty to himself and his duty to the whole of which he is a part, then the wider end takes precedence over the narrower.

This is, in briefest outline, what I believe to be the "historical justification of our human standards." It does not matter at all whether the wolf and the bee act as they do consciously or unconsciously; whether generosity and self sacrifice with them be blind and compelled, or deliberate and willed; the point that is of importance is this: those forms of life which obey these laws survive; those that disobey, die. And this has been as true of men as of animals. The savage may not have seen why he should do this and avoid that, but the fact remains that only those tribes survived who consciously or unconsciously obeyed these mandates of Nature. Our ethical standards are what they are because of this fact. They are in every way similar to all other evolutionary characteristics.

From this view it will be seen that many of our human terms receive very precise definition. Right is what furthers both individual interests and the interests of the whole group. Wrong is the reverse. Good is what is useful. Evil is that which interferes with the discharge of personal or social functions.

Let me now turn for a moment to my second heading and consider the relation of this natural system of ethics to the other elements that enter into the religious complex. As a result of the causes I have attempted to outline, primitive man finds himself with certain feelings of compulsion towards this or that course, often towards a self sacrifice he cannot explain on rational and immediate grounds. He is living under tribal order and law, and the compulsion he is familiar with is the power and authority of his chief-enforced with club and spear. Therefore it is natural for him to ascribe this inner instinct to some external authority, the will of some god or spirit chief.

I think we can even see how he comes by this latter idea. For in dreams he sees his friends and enemies, and talks and acts with them. Thus he is led to a belief in another world than the outer one around

him. Moreover he still sees in dreams those who have died, and thus he is led to think of their continued existence. From this the idea of disembodied spirits and of immortality is formed. Thence the path is plain, and all natural forces, as well as all that happens to the man himself are viewed as the activity of some one or other of these spirit chiefs and heroes. Gradually greater and greater power is ascribed to them. As man moulds ships, so the gods mould mountains, send rain and drought at will, and play with lightning and with storm, until finally the notion of an omnipotent god, as well as an omniscient one, completes the series.

The Editor: Is not this a pretty cold view of life?

The Zoologist: It does not matter whether it is cold or not provided it is true.

The Editor: Many things are true, yet none contains all the truth. What I mean to ask is this: Suppose we grant you all that you have said, what follows? In what way does this bear upon religion? Have you in it a view of life which satisfies you, or which helps you to live?

The Zoologist: Yes, I have. I suppose to some it would seem cold, but to me it is sufficient. If I find the basis for my conduct and ethical ideals in the very laws of life, what is surer or more fundamental? If it is not a religious view in the usual sense it certainly arouses in me that cosmic emotion which I put forward as the basis of religion. Indeed that is just what I tried to make clear: that these were the facts which it seemed to me did underlie first ethics and then religion.

The Mathematician: Let us then look again at certain of their implications. As I understood you, you began by considering the life of the single cell, which acted as though subject to but two desires: self preservation and the preservation of its kind, which last you spoke of as being in one form or another really an act of self sacrifice. From this you passed to a consideration of more complex organisms, such as the jelly-fish. Here you showed that while each component cell carried on its own life it still so co-ordinated itself to its fellows and to the whole of which it is a part that the higher single life of this whole became possible. This co-ordination you showed to be at once egoistic and altruistic in character and you put it forward as the basis of our present ethical ideals, tracing its action through the communities of insects and animals to primitive and civilized man.

Now I would like to ask a question. Is it a legitimate inference that, as the co-ordination of the cells of the jelly-fish enabled each to live with the richer, fuller life of the whole, so obedience to ethical standards would lead man to a higher, wider type of consciousness and existence than that of his present separate personality? Does not your argument suggest that man is part of a far greater whole; that ethics and religion. co-ordinate him with that whole and should enable him to broaden and

deepen his life and consciousness until it is one with that higher consciousness of which his is but an element?

The Zoologist: We must remember, however, that there can be nothing to this higher complex that is not in the elements themselves.

The Author: Surely you do not mean that. The combinations of elements may be totally different from any one of the constituent parts.

The Zoologist: Certainly. All I said was that this whole was compounded from the elements. Whatever the whole is must be made up from something in the elements.

The Social Philosopher: But is even that certain? May not the properties of a whole be quite distinct from the properties of its parts, even when taken together?

The Mathematician: Bolzano's example of a drinking glass would illustrate. Viewed as a whole we perceive it holds water. Conceive it as a collection of broken parts and no such inference is plain.

The Zoologist: I am quite willing to take your illustration as my own. A drinking glass can only be formed from elements capable of being so placed together that there are no gaps. This is a property which must be present in the element-viz.: that they fit one into the other; though you will notice that this is a meaningless characteristic when a single element is alone considered. Anything that is not in some way in the elements themselves can be no more than a mere abstraction.

The Social Philosopher: How about the water itself? Its characteristic property of wetness is absent from both the hydrogen and oxygen which form it. Or, better still, consider a clock and the ability to tell time. Surely time is not a mere abstraction. Yet you will not find it compounded from the brass and steel. Again, to take the mathematician's point, are we not all familiar with the difference between mass psychology and that of the individual. Consider the way in which a mob is moved to frenzy-to panic or to rage, or any emotional excitement. Think of the mob ferocity; the lynchings, the burnings, the torturings, which are nothing but the manifestations of this mob frenzy, while the individuals comprising it may be of themselves quite mild mannered quiet people. These are not mere abstractions.

The Editor: Is it not probable that to each individual amoeba the jelly-fish is a mere abstraction?

The Zoologist: I would contend that aqueosity is in fact, a property already present in the hydrogen and oxygen, and certainly everything that is done in a lynching is done by individuals. In that sense the mob is a mere abstraction. The coming together of many men and their reaction one upon the other, brings out what would otherwise not have been revealed. But it was there, nevertheless. Indeed I think this is a matter of considerable importance, too often overlooked. Whatever is present in the highest organism must also have been present, and always

present in element in the cells which compose it. The continuity of the germ plasm makes this certain.

The Mathematician: You mean?

The Zoologist: I mean "ex nihilo nihil fit." Moreover, acquired characteristics are not transmitted. You do not inherit from your father, but from that common line of life which made him what he is first, and then you what you are. "Natural selection" and other such evolutionary factors do not create, they eliminate. They are the judges of what forms shall endure. They do not produce those forms. Therefore we are forced to view all forms as present in some way in the cells from which they spring.

The Mathematician: Present they doubtless are, but still unrealized and unmanifest,-present as potentialities,—and evolution would appear to be the layer by layer unfoldment of their content. But does not this still further point my question? If all forms of life are pre-existent as potentialities in the single cell, then man must also be the image of the universe, contain within himself all the powers of the whole, present and realizable though unrealized. And you have shown us that at least certain of these possibilities can be manifested, new and higher forms of life realized, by such a co-ordination as you have said ethics and religion in fact are. In this view, then, ethics would appear as something more than preservative. It would be itself a dynamic principle,-the actual machinery of growth. Do we not, in this, return very close to Mr. F's definition of religion as "the climbing instinct," whereby the consciousness and life of man is constantly being widened and raised?

The Zoologist: In a way I think we do. But I would prefer to say that we become more efficient, than that our consciousness is raised. I do not know that the wolf in the pack has a different or higher type of consciousness than the one who hunts alone.

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The Clergyman: But why talk about wolves and bees? Surely we know more of ourselves than we do of amoebas and wolves. And is it not, well, let us say a humorous conceit, to argue seriously that religion is or is not creative because a lone wolf acts about as his brothers in a pack do? Have we not difficulties enough when we begin with and confine ourselves to man?

The Zoologist: It is precisely because we have so many difficulties when we do confine ourselves to man, that it becomes necessary for us to take a broader view. And I do not at all agree with you that we know more of ourselves than of lower orders of life. There is nothing more misleading than introspection, as current religious psychology amply demonstrates.

The Philosopher: I agree with Mr. F. Personally I can see better in a lighted room than in the dark. My own mind is lit for me, the mind of a wolf is not.

The Mathematician: Is it not wise to look in both directions-both inward at our own hearts and minds, and outward upon the workings of nature? These two views seem to me to supplement and correct each other. Thus though I am inclined to think our Zoologists too materialistic in their conception of life and of heredity, taking too little account of the enormous influence of mental and moral environment, which is in fact a moral heredity, it seems to me there is a grandeur and a universality in the view Prof. D― has just presented which I would be sorry to lose. Does it not both enrich and clarify our ordinary thought of ethical standards to see them as at once evolutionary products and evolutionary forces? To view them as the deposit in the consciousness of long ages of experience? Think thus of nature sifting the hearts of her children, breeding brotherhood in us as we breed horses for speed or wind. We may not see why we should act thus or so, why we should feel this right and that wrong. Hereditary tendencies are rarely reasoned, and the deeper any principle is ingrained in our character the less obvious is its cause. The explanation of our ethical standards cannot be found in any immediate benefit, in any cheap clap-trap of honesty being the best policy. They would never have been produced by the conditions of a given moment, nor can they find their sanction in the present. Their causes extend back into the past to the origin of life itself. Their production required the age long integration of successive lives, their justification and their end must ever be beyond us. They are the past acting in us, the present also moulding the time and forms that are to be. They are the will of nature, the evolutionary stream itself, the breath of life. This is what I conceive Prof. D's presentation to mean, and it seems to me to contain elements we cannot well do without. But after all it is only half the story, and I would wish with Mr. F to look at these things directly as we find them in our own hearts. Unreasoned they may there be, but they are not fruitless there. And we do not need to speculate upon their fruit. We can one and all know of our own experience the enrichment that results from altruism and unselfish effort. Indeed I believe we can know it in no other manner. So there surely I think it more profitable to study ourselves than "our brothers the wolves."

The Social Philosopher: It seems to me the study of external nature simply emphasizes the fact that we can only find ethics and religious ideals in our own hearts. I fail entirely to see this moral element in nature of which you talk so much. You seem to me almost deliberately to distort the facts. Because two thugs can kill and rob more safely and lucratively working together than alone, the law does not on that account sanctify their partnership. Yet you are presenting such a conspiracy of murder as a marvelous example of natural religion among the wolves. As for the heroic suicide of the princess bees, as well look upon little

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