cause in the extreme democratic tendencies of the time, and which threatens as well many other noble interests. Not long ago, in an American magazine, Mr R. L. Stevenson laid it down as the law binding on the artist, that he must do his best to entertain his public. Mr Stevenson adopted the epithet "Les filles de joie," which is given to certain artistes of the French stage, and applied it to the artist generically. No doubt, the artist will miss his aim if he fails to interest his public. But there are different ways in which he may seek to do so. He may search in the tastes of the people for what is likely to interest them, and pander to that. If he does so, he degrades his art and himself too, and becomes the Merry-Andrew of the crowd. Action and reaction of that kind between artist and public will lead to deepening degradation, as is only too apparent at the present time in art and literature, and even in politics. On the other hand, the artist in each department may do as the great artists and leaders and thinkers of the past have done. He may find in his own great inspiration the means of interesting men, and thereby he will achieve the double triumph of imparting the purest joy and the noblest enlightenment. It is not the Merry-Andrews of art or literature, or even of the pulpit, to whom

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the world owes its progress, but the men of noble ideals, which were to them a divine inspiration, higher than the plaudits of the crowd, dearer than any temporal reward, more precious even than life itself. Raphael, we know, had no thought of the puplic when he painted his Madonnas, but kept his gaze fixed heavenwards. When Shakspeare wrote his dramas for Elizabeth's Court, his mind. was in other realms. Knox did not rack his brains for a neatly turned sentence to tickle the ears of his congregation, or for a joke to provoke a general smile. Artist, poet, and preacher spake as they were moved from higher spheres, and thereby they have ruled the minds and hearts as they have brightened the lives of men.

CHAPTER XI.

CONCLUSION.

IN conclusion, the Ethic of Nature affords the true basis of our highest hope. The Darwinian conception has nothing to say against the idea of immortality. That doctrine is unopposed by true science, and strongly suggested by hope. Progress is not, as Professor Huxley says it is, a temporary phenomenon. What becomes of the principle vaguely conceived and stated by Sir Charles Lyell, whereby the past must be explained by forces operating in the present, if the inference is refused from present progressive movement to similar progress both in the past and in the future? The fundamental law of the uniformity of nature is on our side. We postulate the same forces operative in far back geologic time as are operative now, and geology confirms us. We postulate the same constituents in the stars as in our earth, and spectrum analysis confirms us. Are we not to postulate the same progressive movement in the future as has been in the past and is in

the present, when science has nothing to say against it, simply because it seems that the earth must be dissolved? Why, the earth, and all our world, is, as a true philosophy teaches, the creation of thought. But it is no necessary inference from even the destruction of the creation to the annihilation of its Creator. The uniformity of nature, which is just one aspect of the law of sufficient Reason, involves the postulate of the continued existence of free persons. That postulate is dictated by all that is sweetest and dearest in human life. That belief has ever been the ennobling ally of heroic action. It is part and parcel of the fundamental postulate, on which all human science, nay all human experience, is based. The same law which justifies the rustic's implicit faith in nature's constancy in the simplest matters of his daily life, directs the confident expec tation of the philosopher forward to the infinite destiny of man. In the stages of evolution anterior to man, as we have seen, the end of nature is the species, not the individual. The individual, in fact, is a mere means to an end, having no infinite, not even an indefinite potentiality of development. The full actuality of the beaver is early reached. Long before his physical vigour begins to decline, he reaches the utmost limit of his nature, and ceases to

be of any further service in the world's progress. His destiny is therefore to pass away, and make room for others. But a free person, who consciously identifies himself with the ethical principle of the universe, possesses an infinite worth, because he is individually capable of an infinite development. He is no longer a mere means to an end. He is an end in himself; and a higher Law of Parsimony than that of Sir William Hamilton forbids the thought of his extinction. So far as observation can penetrate, the entire potentiality of every other creature, in accordance with that higher Law of Parsimony, attains to full actuality. But that cannot be said of free persons in their present state of being. Unlike the beaver, a free intelligence is ever making progress Even when the man is undergoing physical decay the free spirit is ever soaring upwards and hasting onwards to higher spheres of thought and richer domains of feeling. A being with the potentiality of man, who yet is doomed never to reach actuality, is a conception which the fundamental postulate of sufficient Reason forbids us to entertain.* Think of

* "The column of the veterans is already staggering over into the last abyss, while the column of the newest recruits is forming with all its nameless and uncounted hopes" (John Morley, On Compromise, p. 163). Can any thinking man so image life and live? Is the world only a madhouse then?