dispose of all the mean abuses of nepotism.

How often is the world's progress hampered, because, when a vacancy occurs for which a friendless man is eminently qualified, the father or the uncles of some weakling strain every nerve to secure the post for him! The strong man for the work is left out in the cold. The friends of the weak support him against the strong. There is righteous soreness of heart in the disappointed candidate, and the world's work drags wearily on. Here again the principle holds good, that it is the duty of the weak to give place to the strong.

The history of Trade-Unionism affords another good illustration. At first it was illegal for wageearners to combine for the purpose of asserting their rights. And after the Unions obtained a legal standing, they had to fight inch by inch for the vantage ground which they have gained, until now they have a recognised place among the valuable institutions of the country. And while they are allowed to have already secured great benefit to the nation, they are respected as being, in the sound economic knowledge and good sense of their management, the best bulwark we have against the inroad of socialism. The victory of the Trade-Unions all along the line is a proof on which side the real

strength lay in the long contest which they had to maintain. The weak made a vain attempt to resist the just demands of the strong. If capitalists had been wise enough to give way at the outset, as righteous regard for their toiling neighbours would have dictated, what an amount of misery to millions would have been averted, and how much sweeter would have been the relation between capital and labour to-day! There was no necessity for any embittered struggle to determine which side was the stronger. It was not difficult from the first to decide on which side justice lay. And it is absolutely certain in this God-governed world that in the long result of things the just cause must prevail. The mistakes, the follies, the selfishness of men, may delay the victory, and that invariably by the weak, in the larger sense of the term as used here, vainly and presumptuously asserting itself against the strong. But the victory is sure to come at last, and it is merciful and wise, by the spread of enlightenment and a higher morality, to obviate the struggle through the timely and cordial surrender of the weak to the strong.

Most people are familiar with Carlyle's panacea for England's political troubles. Give the tools of Government to those who can use them, was the

practical drift of all his teaching, as it is that of Schäffle, the great German authority on sociology. But it is one thing to know the teaching of a great man; it is quite another thing to put it in practice. Carlyle's teaching, rightly interpreted and applied, would soon produce a radical change in our mode of obtaining our rulers. It would first and foremost dictate a system of education which would spread its meshes through the entire population, high and low, after the manner conceived by the great Condorcet and the other wise statesmen at the promising advent of the French Revolution. This educational net would save and gather in all the available talent of the nation, and would help it forward to the functions suited for it in the State. A seat in Parliament would cease to be an object of selfish ambition. It would become a sacred trust which all men would zealously endeavour to assign to the most worthy. The unhappy jealousy between classes and masses would disappear, in recognition of the rights of an aristocracy with a higher patent of nobility than monarchs can bestow. Is this an impracticable ideal? I sincerely hope not. If it is, I challenge any man to devise a means that will save this nation from revolution and consequent ruin. To hereditary aristocrats, proud of their noble lineage, and plutocrats, as

proud of their wealth, on the one hand, and to aspiring masses on the other, fully persuaded in their own minds that the instinct of the mass has a divine right to rule, the voice of nature proclaims that it is the duty of the weak to give place to the strong.

Go to science and learn its lesson. What was it that clogged the wheels of progress during all the Middle Ages? It was simply the pride of man. Certain abstractions of the Aristotelian philosophy were supposed to contain the germ of all truth, and proud man essayed to build up a universe of knowledge within the four walls of a study furnished with the cobwebs of scholasticism. The weakness of man fought against the strength of the world. And the result was the Cimmerian darkness, which was only dispelled when a return was made to objective truth, and Bacon taught the lesson that in the domain of science the weakness of man must yield before the strength of nature. From such yielding and submission resulted true freedom and power, until at last, as Emerson somewhere says, " man can yoke his waggon to a star.”

Finally, in the region of Art we have the same principle of self-sacrifice, and the weak yielding to the strong. That is all the teaching of the great

Goethe in his supreme canon of the objectivity of art. The artist's personality is to be nowhere in comparison with the idea which he bodies forth. The idea is none of his creation. It comes to him, he knows not whence, out of the long series of his heaven-directed experiences, and it comes with an aspect of divine command which he cannot choose but obey. That is what Carlyle means too by the unconsciousness of genius. In the sphere of science, the not-ourselves which is truth; in the sphere of art, the not-ourselves which is beauty; in the sphere of religion, the not-ourselves which is righteousness; in all three, man reaches the zenith of his glory, when he yields in his weakness to the supreme strength of God.

The next transition in the development of the ethical idea is from reverence to ministration. The art-life of Greece was all grounded in reverence for what is above man, and for what is noblest in man. It needed a new revelation of man to himself to teach him reverence for what is beneath him. This service was rendered by Christianity. Through the life and teaching of Jesus the highest development of the ethic of nature has been reached. Before His advent, the survival of the fittest could only come about through the displacement of the unfit. But