family (as is the case with most women), tribe, country, or nation (as those of oppressed nationalities, or political agents in times of contention), may say that he is a Christian, his morality will always remain a family, national, or State morality, not a Christian; and when the necessity arises for choosing between the welfare of family or of society and that of himself, or between social welfare and the accomplishment of God's will, he will inevitably choose to serve the welfare of that association of his fellows for which he, according to his conception of life, exists; because only in such service does he discover the meaning of his existence. And, similarly, however much you may assure a man, who considers that his relation to the universe consists in the accomplishment of the will of Him that sent him, that he must, in the interest of person, family, State, nation, or humanity, do that which contradicts this superior will, of which he is conscious through the reason and love with which he is equipped, he will always sacrifice persons, family, country, or humanity rather than be unfaithful to the will of Him that sent him, because only by the accomplishment of this will does he realize his conception of life.

Morality cannot be independent of religion, because, not only is it the outcome of religion-that is, of that conception by man of his relation to the universe-but because it is already implied by religion. All religion is a reply to the question, What is my conception of life? And the religious answer always includes a certain moral demand, which may sometimes follow the explanation of this conception, sometimes precede it. The question may be answered thus: The conception of life is the welfare of the individual, therefore profit by every advantage accessible to thee; or, The conception of life is the welfare of an association, serve therefore that association with all thy power; or, The conception of life is the fulfilment of the will of Him that sent thee, therefore try, with all thy power, to learn that will and to do it. And the same question may be answered thus: The conception of life is thy personal pleasure, in that is the true destiny of man; or, The concep

tion of life is the service of that association of which thou considerest thyself a member, for that is thy destiny; or, The conception of life is the service of God, since for that thou hast been made.

Morality is included in the explanation of life which religion offers us, and therefore cannot possibly be divorced from it. This truth is especially prominent in those attempts of non-Christian philosophers to deduce the inculcation of the loftiest morality from their philosophy. These teachers see that Christian morality is indispensable; that existence without it is impossible; more, they see that such a morality does exist, and they desire in some manner to attach it to their non-Christian philosophy, and even so to represent things that it may appear as if Christian morality were the natural outcome of their heathen or social philosophy. And they make the attempt, but their very efforts exhibit more clearly than anything else, not only the independence of Christian morality, but its complete contradiction of the philosophy of individual welfare, of escape from personal suffering, of the welfare of society. Christian ethics, that of which we become conscious by a religious conception of life, demand not only the sacrifice of personality to society, but of one's own person and any aggregate of persons to the service of God. Whereas, heathen philosophy, investigating the means by which the welfare of the individual or of an association of individuals may be achieved, inevitably contradicts the Christian ideal. Heathen philosophy has but one method for concealing this discrepancy: it heaps up abstract conditional ideas, one upon the other, and refuses to emerge from the misty region of metaphysics. Chiefly after this manner was the behavior of the philosophers of the Renaissance, and to this circumstance-namely, the impossibility of reconciling the demands of Christian morality already recognized as existing, with philosophy upon a heathen basis-one must attribute that dreary abstraction, incomprehensibility, estrangement from life, and want of charity of the new philosophy. With the exception of Spinoza, whose philos

ophy proceeded from a religious and truly Christian basis, although he is not commonly reckoned a Christian, and of Kant, a gifted genius who resolutely conducted his ethics independent of his metaphysics; with these two exceptions, every other philosopher, even the brilliant Schopenhauer, manifestly devised artificial connections between their ethics and their metaphysics. One feels that Christian ethics have an original and firmly established standpoint independent of philosophy, and needing not at all the fictitious props placed beneath it, and that philosophy invents such statements not only to avoid an appearance of contradiction, but apparently to involve a natural connection and outcome.

But all these statements only seem to justify Christian ethics while they are considered in the abstract. The moment they are fitted to questions of practical existence, then not only does their disagreement become visible in all its force, but the contradiction between the philosophical basis and that which we regard as morality is made manifest. The unhappy Nietzche, who has lately become so celebrated, is especially noticeable as an example of this contradiction. He is irrefutable when he says that all rules of morality, from the standpoint of the existent non-Christian philosophy, are nothing but falsehood and hypocrisy, and that it is much more advantageous, pleasant, and reasonable for a man to be a member of the society of Uebermensch, than to be one of a crowd which must serve as a scaffold for that society. No combinations of philosophy which proceed from the heathen-religious conception of life can prove that it will be of greater advantage to, and more reasonable for, a man to live, not for his own desired, attainable, and conceivable welfare, or for the welfare of his family and society, but for the welfare of an other, which, as far as he is concerned, may be undesirable, inconceivable, and unattainable by his own insufficient means. That philosophy which is founded on man's welfare as the ideal of existence can never prove to reasoning beings, with the ever-present consciousness of death, that it is fitting for him to renounce his own desirable, con

ceivable, and certain welfare, not for the certain welfare of others-for he can never know the results of his sacrifice-but merely because it is right that he should do so; that it is the categorical imperative.

It is impossible to prove this from the heathen-philosophical standpoint. In order to prove that men are all equal it is best for a man to sacrifice his own life in the service of others, rather than to make his fellows serve him, trampling upon their lives. Otherwise it is necessary for a man to determine his relation to the universe, and to understand that such is the position of a man that he is left no other course, because the meaning of his life is only to be found in the accomplishment of the will of Him that sent him, and that the will of Him that sent him is that he should give his life to the service of mankind. And such a modification in man's perception of his relation to the universe is wrought only by religion.

So, too, is it with the attempts to deduce Christian morality from, and to harmonize it with, the fundamental propositions of heathen science. No sophisms nor mental shifting will destroy the simple and clear proposition, that the hypothesis of evolution, laid as the basis of all the science of our time, is founded upon a general, unchangeable, and eternal law-that of the struggle for existence, and of the survival of the "fittest"-and that, therefore, every man, for the attainment of his own welfare, or of that of his society, must be this fittest, or make his society the fittest, in order that neither he nor his society should perish, but another less fit. However much some naturalists, alarmed by the logical inferences of this law, and by its adaptation to human existence, may strive to extinguish it with words and talk it down, its irrefutability becomes only the more manifest by their efforts, and its control over the life of the entire organic world, and hence over that of man, regarded as an animal.

While I am writing this, the Russian translation of an article by Professor Huxley has been published, compiled from a speech of his upon the evolution of ethics before a certain English society. In this article the learned Pro

fessor-as did some years ago, too, our eminent Professor Beketoff as unsuccessfully as his predecessors-tries to prove that the struggle for existence does not violate morality, and that, alongside the acceptance of the law of this struggle as the fundamental law of existence, morality may not only exist, but may improve. Mr. Huxley's article is full of a variety of jokes, verses, and general views upon the religion and philosophy of the ancients, and therefore is so shock-headed and entangled that only with great pains can one arrive at the fundamental idea. This, however, is as follows: The law of evolution is contrary to the law of morality; this was known to the ancient world of Greece and India. And And the philosophy and religion of either nation led them to the teaching of self abnegation. This teaching, according to the author's opinion, is not correct; but the right one is the following: A law exists, termed by the author" cosmogonic," according to which all creatures struggle among themselves, and only the fittest survives. Man is subordinate to this law, and, thanks to it, has become what he now is. But this law is contrary to morality. How, then, are we to reconcile morality with this law? Thus Social progress exists which tends to suspend the cosmic process, and to replace it by another-an ethical one, the object of which is no longer the survival of the "fittest," but of the "best" in the ethical sense.

Whence came this ethical process Mr. Huxley does not explain, but in Note 19 he says that the basis of this process consists in the fact that men, as well as animals, prefer, on the one hand, to live in companies, and therefore smother within themselves those propensities which are pernicious to societies, and, on the other hand, the members of societies crush by force such actions as are prejudicial to the welfare of the society. Mr. Huxley thinks that this process, which compels men to control their passions for

* I cannot identify Professor Huxley's article, and must apologize if my translation misquotes him. I am unacquainted with the Russian equivalent.- Translator's Note.

the preservation of that association to which they belong, and the fear of punishment should they break the rules of that association, compose that very ethical process the existence of which it behooves him to prove. It evidently appears to Mr. Huxley, in the innocence of his mind, that in English society of our time, with its Irish destitution, its insane luxury of the rich, its trade in opium and spirits, its executions, its sanguinary wars, its extermination of entire nations for the sake of commerce and policy, its secret vice and hypocrisy-it appears to him that a man who does not overstep police regulations is a moral man, and that such a man is guided by an ethical process. Mr. Huxley seems to forget that those personal qualities which may be needful to prevent the destruction of that society in which its member lives, may be of service to the society itself; and that the personal qualities of the members of a band of brigands are also useful to the band; as, also, in our society, we find a use for hangmen, jailers, judges, soldiers, false-pastors, etc., but that the qualities of these men have nothing in common with morality.

Morality is an affair of constant development and growth, and hence the preservation of the instituted orders of a certain society, by means of the rope and scaffold, to which as instruments of morality Mr. Huxley alludes, will be not only not the confirmation, but the infraction of morality. And on the contrary, every infringement of existing canons, such as was the violation by Christ and His disciples of the ordinances of a Roman province, such as would be the defiance of existing regulations by a man who refuses to take part in judgments at law, military service, and payment of taxes, used for military preparations, will be not only not contrary to morality, but the indispensable condition of its manifestation. Every cannibal, who ceases to partake of his species, acts in the same manner and transgresses the ordinances of his society. Hence though actions which be immoral, without doubt, also, every infringe the regulations of society may truly moral action which advances the cause of morality is always achieved by

transgressing some ordinance of society. And, therefore, if there has ever appeared in a society a law which demands the sacrifice of personal advantage to preserve the unity of the whole social fabric, that law is not an ethical statute, but, for the most part, on the contrary (being opposed to all ethics), is that same law of struggle for existence in a latent and concealed form. It is the same struggle, but transferred from units to their agglomerations. It is not the cessation of strife, but the swinging backward of the arm to hit the stronger. If the law of the struggle for existence and survival of the fittest is the eternal law of all life (and one must perforce regard it as such with reference to man considered as an animal) then such misty arguments as to social progress-supposed to proceed from it, and arisen none knows whence, a deus ex machinâ ethical process to assist us in our need-cannot break that law down. If social progress, as Mr. Huxley assures us, collects men into groups, then the same struggle and the same survival will exist between families, races, and states, and this struggle will be, not only not more moral, but more cruel and immoral than that between individuals, as, indeed, we find it in reality.

Even if we admit the impossiblethat all humanity, solely by social progress, will in a thousand years achieve a single unity and will be of one State and nation, even then, not to mention that the struggle suppressed between States and nations will be altered to one between humanity and the animal world, and that that struggle will always remain a struggle-that is, an activity absolutely excluding the possibility of Christian morality as professed by us-not to speak of this, the struggle between the individuals which compose this unity, and between the associations of families, races, nationalities will not in the least be diminished, but will continue the same, only in another form, as we may observe in all associations of men in families, races, and States. Those of one family quarrel and fight—and often most cruelly-between themselves, as well as with strangers. So also in a state, the same struggle continues between those within it,

as between them and those without, only in other forms. In one case men kill each other with arrows and knives, in another by starvation. And if the feeblest are sometimes preserved in the family or State, it is in no wise thanks to the State association, but because self-abnegation and tenderness exist among people joined in families and States. If, of two children without parents, only the fittest survives, whereas both might live with the help of a good mother, this fact will not be in consequence of family unification, but because a certain mother is gifted with tenderness and self-denial. And neither of these gifts can proceed from social progress. To assert that social progress produces morality is equivalent to saying that the erection of stoves produces heat. Heat proceeds from the sun; and stoves produce heat only when fuel-the work of the sun-is kindled in them; so morality proceeds from religion, and social forms of life. produce morality only when into these forms are put the results of religious influence on humanity—that is, morality. Stoves may be kindled, and so may impart heat, or may be left unlit and so remain cold. So, too, social forms may include morality, and in that case morally influence society, or may not include morality and thus remain without influence. Christian morality cannot be founded on the heathen or social conception of life, nor can it be deduced either from nonChristian philosophy or science-can not only not be deduced, but cannot be reconciled with them. So always was it understood by all serious, consistent ancient philosophy and science, which said, "Do our propositions disagree with morality? Well, then, so much the worse for morality," and continued their investigations.

Ethical treatises, not founded on religion, and even lay catechisms, are written and used, and men may believe that humanity is guided by them; but it only seems to be so, because people in reality are guided, not by these treatises and catechisms, but by the religion which they have always had and have; whereas the treatises and catechisms only try to allign themselves with the natural outflux of religion.

Ordinances of lay morality not founded upon religious teaching are similar to the actions of a man who, being ignorant of music, should take the conductor's seat before the orchestra, and begin to wave his arms before the musicians, who are performing The music might continue a little while by its own momentum, and from the previous knowledge of the players, but it is evident that the mere waving of a stick by a man who is ignorant of music' would be not only useless, but would inevitably confuse the musicians and disorganize the orchestra in the end. The same disorder is beginning to take place in the minds of the men of our time, in consequence of the attempts of leading men to teach people morality, not founded on that loftiest religion which is in process of adoption, and is in part adopted by Christian humanity. It would be, indeed, desirable to have a moral teaching unmixed with superstition, but the fact is that moral teaching is only the result of a certain perceived relation of man to the universe, or to God. If the perception of such a relation is expressed in forms

which seem to us superstitious, then, in order to prevent this, we should try to express this relation more clearly, reasonably and accurately, and even to destroy the former perception of man's relationship which has become insufficient, and to put in its place one loftier, clearer and more reasonable; but by no means to invent a so-called lay, irreligious morality founded on sophisms, or upon nothing at all.

The attempts to inculcate morality independent of religion are like the actions of children when, wishing to move a plant which pleases them, they tear off the root which does not please and seems unnecessary to them, and plant it in the earth without the root. Without a religious foundation there can be no true, unsimulated morality, as without a root there can be no true plant. And so in reply to your two questions, I say religion is the conception by man of his relation to the infinite universe, and to its source. And morality is the ever-present guide of life proceeding only from this relation. Contemporary Review.

WHILE the Human Race in successive remote ages had been learning its early lessons of Self-Preservation against the physical influences which it could recognize as destructive and morbific in common surrounding Nature, that class of influences had not been the only one in relation to which Human Life had had to struggle. Not less real than the relations of the race to surrounding things had been, within the race itself, relations which may be distinguished as Ethical; the relations in which each man had stood to his own self-government, and to the fortunes of other men; and in these relations, not less truly than in respect of physical surroundings, struggle against hostile influences had been a familiar

* An Appendix to Chapter I, of my English Sanitary Institutions.

experience of human life as long as human experience had been commemorated.

Definite thoughts regarding this portion of the human struggle for existence become possible to us only in proportion as the times to which our thoughts refer are times more or less historical; times, that is to say, from which the observations and recollections of man as to contemporary matters of fact have in some form or other been transmitted to us; and where no such historical basis for thought is given, compensation for its absence cannot be supplied by abstract theories of the constitution and movements of the human mind. The line of thought, indeed, is peculiarly one in which mere speculation cannot make way. We have no independent means of setting before ourselves an embryological view