fear of punishment mixes or prevails, the moral character of an act otherwise good is diminished or destroyed. The fear of punishment and the hope of reward are, indeed, auxiliary forces which cannot be dispensed with in society. But we feel that complete goodness and perfect virtue would dispense with them altogether; or rather, perhaps, it would be more correct to say, that the hope of reward would be merged and lost as a separate motive in that highest condition of mind in which the performance of duty becomes its own reward, because of the satisfaction it gives to the moral sense, and because of the love borne to that authority whom we feel it our duty to obey.

The place occupied by this instinctive sentiment in the equipment of our nature is as obvious as it is important. The helplessness of infancy and of childhood is not greater than would be the helplessness of the race if the disposition to accept and to obey authority were wanting in us. It is implanted in our nature only because it is one of the first necessities of our life, and a fundamental condition of the development of our powers. All nature breathes the spirit of authority, and is full of the exercise of command. Thou shalt," or Thou shalt not, are word continually on her lips, and all her injunctions and all her prohibitions are backed by the most tremendous sanctions. Moreover, the most tremendous of these sanctions are often those which are not audibly proclaimed, but those which come upon us most gradually, most imperceptibly, and after the longest lapse of time. Some of the most terrible diseases which afflict humanity are known to be the results of vice, and what has long been known of some of these diseases is more and more reasonably suspected of many others. The truth is, that we are born into a system of things in which every act carries with it, by indissoluble ties, a long train of consequences reaching to the most distant future, and which for the whole course of time affect our own condition, the condition of other men, and even the conditions of external nature. we cannot see those consequences beyond the shortest way, and very often those which lie nearest are in the highest

And yet

degree deceptive as an index to ultimate results. Neither pain nor pleasure can be accepted as a guide. With the lower animals, indeed, these, for the most part, tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Appetite is all that the creature has, and in the gratification of it the highest law of the animal being is fulfilled. In man, too, appetite has its own indispensable function to discharge. But it is a lower function, and amounts to nothing more than that of furnishing to reason a few of the primary data on which it has to work-a few, and a few only. Physical pain is indeed one of the threatenings of natural authority; and physical pleasure is one of its rewards. But neither the one nor the other forms more than a mere fraction of that awful and imperial code under which we live. It is the code of an everlasting kingdom, and of a jurisprudence which endures throughout all generations. It is a code which continually imposes on man the abandonment of pleasure, and the endurance of pain, whenever and wherever the higher purposes of its law demand of him the sacrifice. Nor has this spirit of authority ever been without its witness in the human spirit, or its response in the human will. On the contrary, in all ages of the world, dark and distorted as have been his understandings of authority, man has been prone to acknowledge it, and to admit it as the basis of obligation and the rule of duty. This, at all events, is one side of his character, and it is universally recognized as the best.

There is no difficulty, then, in seeing the place which this instinct holds in the unity of nature. It belongs to that class of gifts, universal in the world, which enable all living things to fulfil their part in the order of nature, and to discharge the functions which belong to it. It is when we pass from a review of those instincts and powers with which man has been endowed, to a review of their actual working and results, that we for the first time encounter facts which are wholly exceptional, and which it is, accordingly, most difficult to reconcile with the unities of nature. This difficulty does not lie in the mere existence of a Being with powers which require for their perfection a long process of

development. There is no singularity in this. On the contrary, it is according to the usual course and the universal analogy of nature. Development in different forms, through a great variety of stages, and at different rates of progress, is the most familiar of all facts in creation. In the case of some of the lower animals, and especially in the case of many among the lowest, the process of development is carried to an extent which may almost be said to make the work of creation visible. There are numberless creatures which pass through separate stages of existence having no likeness whatever to each other. In passing through these stages, the same organism differs from itself in form, in structure, in the food on which it subsists, and even in the very element in which it breathes and lives. Physiologists tell us that changes having a mysterious and obscure analogy with these pass over the embryo of all higher animals before their birth. But after birth the development of every individual among the higher orders of creation is limited to those changes which belong to growth, to maturity, and decay. Man shares in these changes, but in addition to these he undergoes a development which affects him not merely as an individual, but as a species and a race. This is purely a development of mind, of character, and of knowledge, giving by accumulation from generation to generation increased command over the resources of nature, and a higher understanding of the enjoyments and of the aims of life.

It is true, indeed, that this is a kind of development which is itself exceptional-that is to say, it is a kind of development of which none of the lower animals are susceptible, and which therefore separates widely between them and man. But although it is exceptional with reference to the lower orders of creation, it is very important to observe that it constitutes no anomaly when it is regarded in connection with creation as a whole. On the contrary, it is the natural and necessary result of the gift of reason and of all those mental powers which are its servants or allies. But all nature is full of these-so full, that every little bit and fragment of its vast domain overflows with matter of

inexhaustible interest to that one only being who has the impulse and inquiry and the desire to know. This power or capacity in every department of nature of fixing the attention and of engrossing the interest of man, depends on the close correspondence between his own faculties and those which are reflected in creation, and on his power of recognizing that correspondence as the highest result of investigation. The lower animals do reasonable things without the gift of reason, and things, as we have seen, often involving a very distant foresight, without having themselves any knowledge of the future. They work for that which is to be, without seeing or feeling anything beyond that which is. They enjoy, but they cannot understand. Reason is, as it were, brooding over them and working through them, while at the same time it is wanting in them. Between the faculties they possess, therefore, and the governing principles of the system in which they live and under which they serve, there is, as it were, a vacant space. It is no anomaly that this space should be occupied by a being with higher powers. On the contrary, it would be the greatest of all anomalies if it were really vacant. It would be strange indeed if there were no link connecting, more closely than any of the lower animals can connect, the mind that is in creation with the mind that is in the creature. This is the place occupied by man's reason-reason not outside of, but in the creature-working not only through him, but also in him—reason conscious of itself, and conscious of the relation in which it stands to that measureless intelligence of which the universe is full. In occupying this place, man fills up, in some measure at least, what would otherwise be wanting to the continuity of things; and in proportion as he is capable of development in proportion as his faculties are expanded-he does fill up this place more and more.

There is nothing, then, really anomalous or at variance with the unity of nature, either in the special elevation of the powers which belong to man, or in the fact that they start from small beginnings and are capable of being developed to an extent which, though certainly not infinite, is at least indefinite. .

That which is rarely exceptional, and indeed absolutely singular in man, is the persistent tendency of his development to take a wrong direction. In all other creatures it is a process which follows a certain and determined law, going straight to a definite, consistent, and intelligible end. In man alone it is a process which is prone to take a perverted course, tending not merely to arrest his progress, but to lead him back along de scending paths to results of utter degradation and decay. I am not now affirming that this has been the actual course of man as a species or as a race when that course is considered as a whole. But that it is often the course of individual men, and that it has been the course of particular races and generations of men in the history of the world, is a fact which cannot be denied. The general law may be a law of progress; but it is certain that this law is liable not only to arrest but to reversal. In truth it is never allowed to operate unopposed, or without heavy deductions from its work. For there is another law ever present, and ever working in the reverse direction. Running alongside, as it were, of the tendency to progress, there is the other tendency to retrogression. Between these two there is a war which never ceases-sometimes the one, sometimes the other, seeming to prevail. And even when the better and higher tendency is in the ascendant, its victory is qualified and abated by its great opponent. For just as in physics the joint operation of two forces upon any moving body results in a departure from the course it would have taken if it had been subject to one alone, so in the moral world almost every step in the progress of mankind deviates more or less from the right direction. And every such deviation must and does increase, until much that had been gained is again lost, in new developments of corruption and of vice. The recognition of this fact does not depend on any particular theory as to the nature or origin of moral distinctions. It is equally clear, whether we judge according to the crudest standard of the Utilitarian scheme, or according to the higher estimates of an independent morality. Viewed under either system, the course

of development in man cannot be reconciled with the ordinary course of nature, or with the general law under which all other creatures fulfil the conditions of their being.

It is no mere failure to realize aspirations which are vague and imaginary. that constitutes this exceptional element in the history and in the actual condition of mankind. That which constitutes the terrible anomaly of his case admits of perfectly clear and specific definition. Man has been and still is a constant prey to appetites which are morbid-to opinions which are irrational, to imaginations which are horrible, and to practices which are destructive. The prevalence and the power of these in a great variety of forms and of degrees is a fact with which we are familiar-so familiar, indeed, that we fail to be duly impressed with the strangeness and the mystery which really belong to it. All savage races are bowed and bent under the yoke of their own perverted instincts instincts which generally in their root and origin have an obvious utility, but which in their ac tual development are the source of miseries without number and without end. Some of the most horrible perversions which are prevalent among savages have no counterpart among any other created beings, and when judged by the barest standard of utility, place man immeasurably below the level of the beasts. We are accustomed to say of many of the habits of savage life that they are 'brutal." But this is entirely to misrepresent the place which they really occupy in the system of nature. None of the brutes have any such perverted dispositions; none of them are ever subject to the destructive operation of such habits as are common among men. And this contrast is all the more remarkable when we consider that the very worst of these habits affect conditions of life which the lower animals share with us, and in which any departure from those natural laws which they universally obey, must necessarily produce, and do actually produce, consequences so destructive as to endanger the very existence of the race. Such are all those conditions of life affecting the relation of the sexes which are common to all

creatures, and in which man alone exhibits the widest and most hopeless divergence from the order of nature.

It fell in the way of Malthus in his celebrated work on population to search in the accounts of travellers for those causes which operate, in different countries of the world, to check the progress, and to limit the numbers of mankind. Foremost among these is vice, and foremost among the vices is that most unnatural one, of the cruel treatment of women. "In every part of the world," says Malthus, one of the most general characteristics of the savage is to despise and degrade the female sex. Among most of the tribes in America, their condition is so peculiarly grievous, that servitude is a name too mild to describe their wretched state. A wife is no better than a beast of burden. While the man passes his days in idleness or amusement, the woman is condemned to incessant toil. Tasks are imposed upon her without mercy, and services are received without complacence or gratitude. There are some districts in America where this state of degradation has been so severely felt that mothers have destroyed their female infants, to deliver them at once from a life in which they were doomed to such a miserable slavery."'* It is impossible to find for this most vicious tendency any place among the unities of nature. There is nothing like it among the beasts. With them the equality of the sexes, as regards all the enjoyments as well as all the work of life, is the universal rule. And among those of them in which social instincts have been specially implanted, and whose systems of polity are like the most civilized polities of men, the females of the race are treated with a strange mixture of love, of loyalty, and of devotion. If, indeed, we consider the necessary and inevitable results of the habit prevalent among savage men to maltreat and degrade their womenits effects upon the constitution, and character, and endurance of children, we cannot fail to see how grossly unnatural it is, how it must tend to the greater and greater degradation of the race, and how recovery from this downward path must become more and more

* Malthus, 6th Edition, vol. i. p. 39.

difficult or impossible. But, vicious, destructive, unnatural as this habit is, it is not the only one or the worst of similar character which prevail among savage men. A horrid catalogue comes to our remembrance when we think of thempolyandry, infanticide, cannibalism, deliberate cruelty, systematic slaughter connected with warlike passions or with religious customs. Nor are these vices, or the evils resulting from them, peculiar to the savage state. Some of them, indeed, more or less changed and modified in form, attain a rank luxuriance in civilized communities, corrupt the very bones and marrow of society, and have brought powerful nations to decay and death.

It is, indeed, impossible to look abroad either upon the past history or the existing condition of mankind, whether savage or civilized, without seeing that it presents phenomena which are strange and monstrous-incapable of being reduced within the harmony of things or reconciled with the unity of nature. The contrasts which it presents to the general laws and course of nature cannot be stated too broadly. There is nothing like it in the world. element of confusion amid universal order. Powers exceptionally high spending themselves in activities exceptionally base; the desire and the faculty of acquiring knowledge coupled with the desire and the faculty of turning it to the worst account; instincts immeasurably superior to those of other creatures, alongside of conduct and of habits very much below the level of beasts-such are the combinations with which we have to deal as unquestionable facts when we contemplate the actual condition of mankind. And they are combinations in the highest degree unnatural; there is nothing to account for, or to explain them in any apparent natural necessity.

The question then arises, as one of the greatest of all mysteries-how it is and why it is that the higher gifts of man's nature should not have been associated with corresponding dispositions. to lead as straight and as unerringly to the crown and consummation of his course, as the dispositions of other creatures do lead them to the perfect development of their powers and the

perfect discharge of their functions in the economy of nature?

It is as if weapons had been placed in the hands of man which he has not the strength, nor the knowledge, nor the rectitude of will to wield aright. It is in this contrast that he stands alone. In the light of this contrast we see that the corruption of human nature is not a mere dogma of theology, but a fact of science. The nature of man is seen to be corrupt not merely as compared with some imaginary standard which is supposed to have existed at some former time, but as compared with a standard which prevails in every other department of nature at the present day. We see, too, that the analogies of creation are adverse to the supposition that this condition of things was original. It looks as if something exceptional must have happened. The rule throughout all the rest of nature is, that every creature does handle the gifts which have been given to it with a skill as wonderful as it is complete, for the highest purposes of its being, and for the fulfilment of its

part in the unity of creation. In man alone we have a being in whom this adjustment is imperfect-in whom this faculty is so defective as often to miss its aim. Instead of unity of law with certainty and harmony of result, we have antagonism of laws, with results at the best of much shortcoming and often of hopeless failure. And the anomaly is all the greater when we consider that this failure affects chiefly that portion of man's nature which has the direction of the rest-on which the whole result depends, as regards his conduct, his happiness, and his destiny. The general fact is this-first, that man is prone to set up and to invent standards of obligation which are low, false, mischievous, and even ruinous; and secondly, that when he has become possessed of standards of obligation which are high, and true, and beneficent, he is prone, first, to fall short in the observance of them, and next, to suffer them, through various processes of decay, to be obscured and lost.-Contemporary Review.

"Don't add, with plumage gay,' I pray you," laughed Delphine, for my plumage is very old and shabby, and is likely to continue so.'

"It shows off your beauty the better, then," replied the other, as they went arm in arm down a long, light, broad corridor. There was abundance of room in Yoresett House. If the girls had not many other luxuries, they could each indulge in that of a separate bedroom, and one or two sitting-rooms apiece as well. The only difficulty about it being, as Rhoda had more than once observed, that there was no furniture in any of them.

Delphine flitted about the room, pouring out water for Judith to wash her