UC-NRLF 
 
 A-B-BUCKLEY 
 

 GIFT OF 
 A. F. Morrison 
 

 
 
 
 
 
ff. 
 
' 
 
MOEAL TEACHINGS OF SCIENCE 
 
BY THE SAME AUTHOR. 
 
 The Fairy-Land of Science. 
 
 With 74 Illustrations. 12mo. Cloth, gilt, 
 $1.50. 
 
 Through Magic Glasses, 
 
 and other Lectures. A Sequel to " The Fairy- 
 Land of Science." Illustrated. 12rno. Cloth, 
 gilt, $1.50. 
 
 Life and Her Children: 
 
 Glimpses of Animal Life from the Amoeba to 
 the Insects. With over 100 Illustrations. 
 12mo. Cloth, gilt, $1.50. 
 
 Winners in Life's Race; 
 
 or, The Great Backboned Family. With 
 numerous Illustrations. 12mo. Cloth, ailt, 
 $1.50. 
 
 A Short History of Natural Science ; 
 
 and of the Progress of Discovery from the Time 
 of the Greeks to the Present lime. New edi- 
 tion, revised and rearranged. With 77 Illus- 
 trations. 12mo. Cloth, $2.00. 
 
 D. APPLETON & CO., Publishers, New York. 
 
MORAL TEACHINGS 
 
 OF SCIENCE 
 
 BY 
 
 ARABELLA B. BUCKLEY 
 
 (MRS. FISHER) 
 
 AUTHOR OF THE FAIRYLAND OF SCIENCE, THROUGH MAGIC GLASSES, 
 
 LIFE AND HER CHILDREN, WINNERS IN LIFE'S RACE, 
 
 A SHORT HISTORY OF NATURAL SCIENCE, ETC. 
 
 Everything in nature acts according to laws ; 
 the distinction of a rational being is the faculty 
 of acting according to consciousness of laws. 
 
 KANT. 
 
 Thus the reproach is removed of laying the 
 foundation of the noblest part of our nature in 
 the base principle of selfishness. . . . 
 
 DARWIN, Descent of Man. 
 
 NEW YORK 
 D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 
 
 1892 
 
v 7 
 
 GIFT OF 
 
 fed? Edition; 
 
PREFACE 
 
 THE six chapters which form this little volume 
 were written in 1890 for the Chautauquan. 
 Five of them only were published, owing to 
 want of space, and some of these were cur- 
 tailed. I have now been asked to republish 
 the whole, and in so doing I have restored all 
 the original passages and added some others. 
 In the main, however, the chapters remain as 
 at first written, and, though the necessity for 
 brevity has caused some points to be assumed 
 which, in a larger treatise, would have been 
 more fully explained, it has, perhaps, the ad- 
 vantage of appealing to many readers who 
 would not take up an elaborate philosophical 
 work. 
 
 M92340 
 
vi PREFACE 
 
 It is for such persons that the book is in- 
 tended namely, those who, feeling puzzled 
 and adrift in the present chaos of opinion, 
 may welcome even a partial solution, from a 
 scientific point of view, of the difficulties which 
 oppress their minds. 
 
 AKABELLA B. BUCKLEY. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAP. PAGE 
 
 I. SCIENTIFIC ASPECT OF THE UNIVERSE AND ITS LAWS . 1 
 
 II. BEARING OF THE THEORY OF NATURAL SELECTION 
 
 UPON THE QUESTION OF MORALITY . . .18 
 
 III. THE ARGUMENT FROM PLANT LIFE . . . .33 
 
 IV. DAWNINGS OF MORALITY IN ANIMAL LIFE . .55 
 V. SELF-KEGARDING ARGUMENTS FOR MORAL CONDUCT . 80 
 
 VI. TRUE MORALITY, ITS ORIGIN, AND ITS BEARING ON 
 
 THE QUESTION OF IMMORTALITY . . .97 
 
MOEAL TEACHINGS OF SCIENCE 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 " Can the stars' motions give me peace, 
 Or the herbs' virtues mine increase ? " 
 
 COVENTRY PATMORE. 
 
 " Our understanding cannot in this body found itself but in 
 sensible things, nor arrive so clearly to the knowledge of God 
 and things invisible as by the orderly conning over the visible 
 and inferior creation." MILTOX. 
 
 LET me beg of the reader not to pass lightly 
 over the two quotations at the head of this 
 article, for he will find in the second a noble 
 and earnest answer to the first, though written 
 two hundred years before it; and upon this 
 answer will be grounded the arguments of our 
 Science Teachings, in which we propose to con- 
 sider how far science, or the study of the world 
 outside ourselves, can help and guide us in the 
 
2 MORAL TEACHINGS OF SCIENCE 
 
 conduct of our life. That we want help, no one 
 can doubt who looks around upon the turmoil of 
 opinions in our; cUji th;3 breaking down of old 
 barriers, the rebellion , against authority, and the 
 corifukibJl ( 6? c <ynei)'g .notions : of right and wrong. 
 The very fundamental principles of religion and 
 morality are often called in question whether 
 there be a God, and if there be one, whether He 
 is omnipotent and benevolent ; whether this life 
 is all, or a preparation for a better one ; whether 
 it is best to be just and merciful, self-sacrificing 
 and loving, or whether self-interest and selfish 
 enjoyment are the end and aim of existence. 
 
 Nor are these questions mooted only by men 
 who wish to make them an excuse for self- 
 indulgence and vice. We live in an age of 
 earnest scepticism, when thoughtful people of 
 every class are filled with a passionate desire 
 for truth at all costs ; they imperatively demand 
 a reason for the doctrines that are presented to 
 them, and will act only upon sincere personal 
 convictions, however crude these may be. The 
 very leaders of knowledge are sharply divided 
 in opinion. Theology is now studied as a 
 science, and points are disputed, which in the 
 age of our forefathers were accepted without 
 
MORAL TEACHINGS OF SCIENCE 3 
 
 discussion; while the rapid spread of scientific 
 discovery has discredited many dogmas of earlier 
 days, under which, nevertheless, deep truths are 
 hidden. Those who are gradually tracing out, 
 step by step, unvarying law and order in the 
 universe, cannot accept much which was readily 
 believed before the immutability of natural law 
 was either known or suspected ; while those who 
 have not made natural laws their special study, 
 are pained and shocked at being called upon to 
 reconsider deeply-rooted and cherished beliefs. 
 
 Now all this would not in itself be hurtful, 
 if belief were not needed for everyday conduct. 
 So long as both sides are seeking truth, they are 
 certain in the end to rise above the clouds of 
 confusion into the higher regions where all 
 broken lights merge into one. But life consists 
 in action, and for right action men need steady 
 principles. All people are not earnest, and even 
 many who are, cannot think out their own stand- 
 point, but accept the prevailing thought of the 
 day ; and to these people a conflict of opinions 
 concerning the higher questions of religion and 
 morality becomes actually harmful. Perplexed, 
 and weary of the constant discussions upon the 
 most fundamental truths, they throw aside all 
 
4 MORAL TEACHINGS OF SCIENCE 
 
 belief in disgust ; the better minds sink into 
 perplexity and doubt,' the meaner ones follow 
 their selfish instincts without restraint. A corre- 
 spondent from one of our colonies wrote the 
 following sentence a short time ago in connection 
 with a sad crime which had been committed : 
 "The great danger in our day is that young 
 men have no fixed principles to guide them; 
 religion has lost its hold, and with it have gone 
 the religious sanctions of morality. Right and 
 wrong are becoming with them mere matters of 
 expediency, a calculation as to what will best 
 serve their ends." 
 
 Surely this is a very serious state of things, 
 and one which cannot be cured by an appeal to 
 doctrinal teaching, for the very root of the 
 difficulty lies in the fact that the religions of 
 the present day have ceased to influence many 
 minds. In this dilemma it may be well to 
 remember that there are twa ways of approach- 
 ing every question, from within outward, or 
 from without inward. The first of these, the 
 study of man's inner nature, has been from the 
 earliest times the groundwork of religion and 
 philosophy. The second, the study of the out- 
 side world, and of man's physical nature, has 
 
MORAL TEACHINGS OF SCIENCE 5 
 
 been the acknowledged domain of science. Yet 
 these are not really two, but only different 
 methods of arriving at one result, namely, the 
 knowledge of the laws by which we and all the 
 rest of nature are governed. If then the first 
 seems to fail us, why should we not inquire 
 whether the second will not afford us a firmer 
 standpoint ? 
 
 No doubt the higher questions of theology 
 must always remain matters of inference and 
 faith rather than of direct proof, though even 
 these may be made more clear by " orderly 
 conning over the visible and inferior creation." 
 But our relations toward our fellowmen belong 
 to this world and to our present daily life, and 
 are intimately bound up with the whole history 
 of living beings upon the earth. On this point, 
 at least, science has a right to speak, and if we 
 only desire to arrive at the truth we shall inquire 
 fearlessly. 
 
 What we want is a sure and intelligible 
 basis on which we can take our stand in the 
 work of life. If selfishness is the universal law 
 of progress, then the sooner we learn the truth 
 the better. But if this is not so, we need have 
 no fear that the study of natural laws will mis- 
 
6 MORAL TEACHINGS OF SCIENCE 
 
 lead us into believing it. With our limited 
 knowledge we may often be perplexed, but so 
 long as we do not overstrain the facts w r e shall 
 not be confounded. If it be true that the 
 instincts which lead us to be just and merciful, 
 honest and unselfish, pure and affectionate, to 
 fear moral degradation and to aspire to noble- 
 ness of character, are inherent in the very laws 
 of our being, then we shall find the gradual 
 development of these qualities in the ground- 
 work of living nature. In a word, we shall find 
 evidence that high moral duties are not true 
 merely because all religions have taught them, 
 but that all religions have taught them because 
 they are true. 
 
 If we can establish this conclusion, though 
 much must remain uncertain so long as our 
 view is so limited, yet we shall have found firm 
 ground upon which the scientific and religious 
 sanctions of morality meet, affording a bulwark 
 against the flood of scepticism as to all things 
 noble and good, which threatens to overwhelm 
 us. 
 
 Let us begin then by considering the most 
 general and comprehensive conclusion which the 
 study of science has been establishing for us 
 
MORAL TEACHINGS OF SCIENCE 7 
 
 during the last four hundred years. This con- 
 clusion, which even now is often disregarded 
 by many practical and sensible people, is that 
 the laws governing the universe are constant 
 and unvarying so far as we can trace them. In 
 'the childhood of the world, when every event 
 from the rising of the sun to an eclipse or an 
 earthquake was a miracle unconnected with 
 other events, it was impossible for men to 
 learn anything of the true workings of nature ; 
 and even long after nations became civilised 
 and very advanced in culture, science lagged 
 behind. The field of accurate knowledge could 
 only be conquered inch by inch by patient 
 observers, and many scattered conclusions had 
 to be formed and registered before they could 
 be united into one system. 
 
 Even as late as the beginning of the seven- 
 teenth century men still believed that our little 
 world was the centre of all things, and the sun, 
 moon, and stars created simply for our use to 
 give light by day and night; and those who 
 care to examine carefully many beliefs of the 
 present day will be surprised to find how much 
 they are influenced by the survival of this 
 ancient error, as for example when men speak of 
 
8 MORAL TEACHINGS OF SCIENCE 
 
 the whole scheme of creation, and of the in- 
 tentions of the Deity as relating solely to our 
 world and its inhabitants. Science, however, 
 was slowly but surely dispelling this illusion. 
 Ptolemy in the time of the Greeks had accu- 
 rately worked out the movements of the sun and 
 planets on the theory that they moved round 
 our earth. Copernicus in the middle of the 
 sixteenth century was able (precisely because 
 Ptolemy had worked conscientiously and stated 
 the facts accurately, so far as he knew them) to 
 show that he was mistaken, and that our earth, 
 together with the planets, moves round the sun. 
 Then followed the discoveries of Galileo, the 
 observations of Tycho Brahe, and the labours 
 of Kepler, reducing the movements of the 
 planets to definite laws ; and finally, towards 
 the end of the seventeenth century, Newton, 
 by the discovery of gravitation, explained why 
 the planets follow these laws, and established a 
 theory of mutual attraction which holds true 
 throughout the whole of the heavenly bodies of 
 which we have any knowledge. 
 
 This discovery, which seems at first sight to 
 have little or nothing to do with our inner nature, 
 really gives us the standpoint upon which the 
 
MORAL TEACHINGS OF SCIENCE 9 
 
 lever of moral action must be placed to move 
 mankind ; for it was the thin end of the wedge 
 
 J O 
 
 which has slowly but surely driven out the idea 
 of caprice, chance, and special interference from 
 the universe. 
 
 The law of gravitation once established gave 
 a strong impetus to astronomy. Laplace proved 
 that it accounted for all the intricate movements 
 of the solar system; and the mathematical 
 calculations by which Adams and Leverrier 
 discovered the unknown planet Neptune were 
 founded entirely on the fact that the motion of 
 Uranus was inconsistent with the law, unless 
 caused by the attraction of some unseen body. 
 So firm had become the conviction that this law 
 is constant and unvarying in its action ! 
 
 Meanwhile the stars, too, began to yield up 
 their secrets. Halley and others showed that 
 some stars had shifted their places since the days 
 of Ptolemy, and that they are separated from us 
 by such enormous distances that they must be 
 mighty globes of light. It remained for Sir W. 
 Herschel to prove that many of them are much 
 larger and more brilliant than our sun, which, 
 instead of being the centre of the universe, is one 
 of the smaller stars, and is carrying our solar 
 
 2 
 
io MORAL TEACHINGS OF SCIENCE 
 
 system toward a spot in the constellation Hercules 
 at the rate of about half a million of miles a 
 day. 
 
 Here, again, we have to give up our pre- 
 eminence. Not only is our earth not the centre 
 of the universe, but even our sun is but a small 
 wandering star among the myriads of heavenly 
 bodies, and we can no longer therefore reason as 
 though the whole scheme of creation had been 
 shaped with a view to the existence of man only, 
 nor as if the concerns and destiny of our world 
 were the end and aim of all things. What we 
 lose on the one hand, however, we gain on the 
 other, for our mind travels out into the universe, 
 and together with our own littleness we learn 
 the greatness and the constancy of the hidden 
 Power which holds us in its grasp. 
 
 Yet one more conclusion remains to be noted. 
 It was again the elder Herschel who discovered 
 that the binary stars, such as Castor in the 
 constellation Gemini, are two separate suns 
 revolving round each other ; and the mathema- 
 ticians taking up the problem proved that such 
 stars perform their revolutions in a definite time 
 round a common centre exactly in accordance 
 with the law of gravitation. " Thus," writes Sir 
 
MORAL TEACHINGS OF SCIENCE if 
 
 Robert Ball, 1 " a whisper from the binary stars 
 came across the vast abyss of space. That 
 whisper told us that the law of gravitation is not 
 peculiar to the solar system. It told us the law 
 extended to the distant shores of the abyss in 
 which our island is situated. It gives us grounds 
 for believing that the law of gravitation is 
 obeyed throughout the length, the breadth, the 
 depth, and the height of the entire visible 
 heavens." 
 
 So much then for the lessons of astronomy, 
 and when we turn to other physical sciences the 
 same truths meet us. In physics as in astronomy 
 all discoveries and applications of the various 
 forces rest upon the conviction, based upon ex- 
 periment, that their action is constant and 
 unvarying, and that apparent exceptions are due 
 entirely to our ignorance. 
 
 Science has been gradually bringing all iso- 
 lated facts under the reign of law, until at last 
 all the physical forces, heat, light, electricity and 
 magnetism, chemical affinity and cohesion have 
 been proved to be but different forms of energy, 
 or the power of doing work, so that when this 
 energy disappears as light or heat, it reappears 
 
 1 The Story of the Heavens, p. 402. 
 
12 MORAL TEACHINGS OF SCIENCE 
 
 as electricity or chemical affinity, or does work in 
 building up the cells of plants or the tissues of 
 animals. In like manner as we now know that 
 the planets and stars revolve in regular and law- 
 abiding order in the heavens, so we have proved 
 by observation and experiment that the energy 
 producing all physical activity is fixed and 
 unvarying, disappearing in one form only to 
 reappear in another. 
 
 When next we turn to the material of which 
 our earth and other bodies are composed, the 
 same conclusion reappears. For spectrum an- 
 alysis has now shown that iron, sodium, calcium, 
 hydrogen, and many other elements are common 
 to our world, to the sun, and to the most distant 
 stars and nebulae ; obeying there the same con- 
 ditions and laws as obtain on our globe. Nay, 
 more ! the most recent experiments made upon 
 the so-called elements, in our laboratories, tend to 
 lead us to the conclusion that they may be but 
 different forms of one original substance, as heat 
 and electricity are but different forms of energy. 
 
 So we are led on all sides to unity and uni- 
 formity of action, the apparent irregularities of 
 nature due to our ignorance finding their place 
 one after another as regular modes of manifestation 
 
MORAL TEACHINGS OF SCIENCE 13 
 
 of a great underlying cause too vast for us to 
 grasp in its reality and entirety. And to this we 
 must add one more inference which is becoming 
 more clear and certain as science moves on this 
 is that the visible universe which we can examine 
 has not been always as it is in our time, but is 
 the result of gradual evolution and development. 
 Even now spectrum analysis shows nebulae in 
 which matter is still in a state of gas, others in 
 which stars are apparently forming, while in our 
 own solar system everything points to the probable 
 explanation that our earth and the other planets 
 were once part of the sun and have been left be- 
 hind during the condensation of the solar nebulae, 
 revolving around the central orb and gradually 
 cooling down to their present condition. In our 
 world we can carry the history still farther, for 
 we have now traced the gradual development of 
 living beings, the succession of higher and 
 higher forms in the strata of the different geo- 
 logical periods, and the final crowning point in the 
 appearance of man in later ages. 
 
 We see then that experience has invariably 
 shown, as our knowledge has increased, that 
 anything apparently capricious, anomalous, and 
 irregular in the working of the visible universe 
 
14 MORAL TEACHINGS OF SCIENCE 
 
 arises only from our infirmity of vision. The 
 farther we penetrate, the more orderly and regu- 
 lar is the sequence we discover, leading us to a 
 settled conviction that the Will working behind 
 and in the universe is unwavering and constant. 
 " Thus," in the words of Mr. Herbert Spencer, 
 " the consciousness of an Inscrutable Power, mani- 
 fested to us through all phenomena, has been 
 growing ever clearer, and must eventually be 
 freed from its imperfections. The certainty that 
 on the one hand such a power exists, while on 
 the other hand its nature transcends intuition 
 and is beyond imagination, is the certainty 
 towards which intelligence has from the first 
 been progressing. To this conclusion Science 
 inevitably arrives as it reaches its confines ; while 
 to this conclusion Eeligion is irresistibly driven by 
 criticism. And satisfying as it does the demands 
 of the most rigorous logic at the same time that 
 
 o o 
 
 it gives the religious sentiment the widest pos- 
 sible sphere of action, it is the conclusion we are 
 bound to accept without reserve or qualification." l 
 While, however, we must all freely admit that 
 the ultimate nature and attributes of the great 
 First Cause which we call " God " must transcend 
 
 1 First Principles, p. 108. 
 
MORAL TEACHINGS OF SCIENCE 15 
 
 our utmost efforts of intuition or imagination, 
 we cannot surely fail to recognise that partial 
 manifestations of that nature are taking place 
 within and around us at every moment of our 
 lives. To allege, as some able men have done, 
 that it is idle for us to attempt to discern the 
 purposes and will of such a Cause in ourselves, 
 or in the natural world around us, has always 
 appeared to me to create a difficulty where none 
 exists. 
 
 No one for a moment supposes that we 
 shall ever form an exact conception of the 
 universe, since every increase in our powers of 
 observation and analysis shows that more and 
 more lies beyond, and that it is impossible to 
 reach the end. Yet this does not prevent us from 
 understanding in a large measure the laws govern- 
 ing the portion we do see, as astronomy, of all 
 the sciences, especially proves to us. In like 
 manner our own existence and that of others is 
 an absolute mystery, and the only available start- 
 ing-point is our own consciousness, the nature of 
 which is a's inscrutable as that of the Deity. 
 Yet we act daily upon our knowledge of the laws 
 of human nature predicting results and finding 
 our judgment correct. 
 
16 MORAL TEACHINGS OF SCIENCE 
 
 By the same reasoning we can never hope to 
 form an adequate conception of an Infinite First 
 Cause. But those who for this reason would 
 deny us a knowledge of God, seem to forget that 
 the very forces acting in nature, and in our- 
 selves, emanate from God and would be non- 
 existent without Him. Whether, therefore, we 
 consider the unvarying law and order of the 
 physical universe, or the intelligence exhibited 
 in the organic world and culminating in the self- 
 consciousness and will of man, we are actually 
 studying those phases in the nature of the First 
 Cause of which these are the expression. On no 
 hypothesis founded upon the facts of nature can 
 we shut out His ever-present action, nor shake 
 the self-evident truth that in Him all existence 
 "lives and moves and has its being;" while 
 every step we take leads us more and more to 
 the conviction that He is " without variableness 
 or shadow of turning." 
 
 If then we can understand the working of the 
 laws of the universe even in their lowest and 
 simplest stage, we have just so far entered into 
 the Will of which they form part. If we can 
 guide our conduct by them, we must be moving 
 in the line of least resistance and tending toward 
 
MORAL TEACHINGS OF SCIENCE 17 
 
 perfection. If by means of them we can arrive 
 at a better understanding of our own infinitely 
 more complex nature, we shall in so far arrive 
 nearer to a comprehension of His infinite and 
 often inscrutable attributes among which must be 
 those from which originated the laws of our 
 being. 
 
 Therefore when the poet asks, " Can the stars' 
 motions give me peace ? " we must surely answer 
 "Yes." For in these, the most mechanical and 
 therefore the least complex of nature's problems, 
 we invariably find that constancy and stability, 
 which are the foundation of all confidence. As 
 a child in moments of terror looks into its 
 parent's face, and seeing there calm and courage, 
 trusts confidently that all is well, so man in 
 moments of depression and helplessness must 
 surely find rest in the starry heavens, an earnest 
 to him of the great truth that caprice and 
 uncertainty have no place in the universe, but 
 that his life too is part of a fixed and stable 
 purpose, emanating from Infinite Knowledge 
 and Power. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 " All nature is but art unknown to thee ; 
 All chance, direction which thou canst not see; 
 All discord, harmony not understood ; 
 All partial evil, universal good; 
 And spite of pride, in erring reason's spite, 
 One truth is clear, whatever is, is right." POPE. 
 
 FOR a long time after the unvarying action of law 
 had been recognised in the inorganic world, no 
 such generalisation was applied to living beings. 
 Each species of plant and animal was supposed 
 to have been created at the beginning of the 
 world, with a definite structure and habits of its 
 own; and the similarity between the different 
 forms was accounted for by their being all 
 designed upon one general plan by the 
 Creator. 
 
 The whole scheme of the living creation, with 
 man at its head, seemed to lie altogether beyond 
 the reach of investigation God had made the 
 
MORAL TEACHINGS OF SCIENCE 19 
 
 endless diversity of living forms, but how He had 
 made them was a mystery no one even attempted 
 to explain. Nor did the fact of the pain and 
 distress suffered by all animals in the struggle for 
 life and food seem to have caused any surprise. 
 No thoughtful mind could deny that "the whole 
 creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together 
 until now ;" but this was believed to be the result 
 of man's fall, and the injustice of such an explan- 
 ation did not suggest itself. 
 
 The first awakening to the extent of our 
 ignorance on these points came from geology, 
 and was a parallel in the world of life to the 
 discovery in astronomy that our world is not the 
 centre of the universe. In the early part of this 
 century man first learnt that there has been a 
 succession of living forms upon the globe. When 
 Cuvier put together the bones of fossil animals 
 found under Paris, and showed that they belonged 
 to extinct species, different from any now living, 
 he laid the foundation of the study of paleontology, 
 which has since taught us that there w r as once a 
 time when huge fish and amphibia were the chief 
 animals in the world, another when reptiles had 
 begun to flourish, while birds branched off and 
 filled the air with feathered life ; and again, that 
 
20 MORAL TEACHINGS OF SCIECNE 
 
 it was only in comparatively late geological ages 
 tliat the mammalia became the most powerful 
 creatures on the earth, ending in the advent of 
 man himself. 
 
 This discovery of the successive appearance of 
 the different classes of animals worked a change 
 in our ideas concerning the living creation. In 
 the first place, it forced men to consider what 
 they meant by an animal being " created." It 
 was one thing to talk vaguely about what 
 happened at the beginning of the world, and 
 another to try and imagine how an elephant, for 
 example, appeared abruptly in the midst of other 
 living beings and gave rise to a new species. 
 Men of science began to cast about for some ex- 
 planation of how these numerous forms had been 
 produced one after the other; and the great 
 French naturalist Lamarck suggested that the 
 different species of animals were not separate 
 creations, but had been gradually developed from 
 a few simple living forms, so that in the course of 
 long ages there had sprung up a great variety of 
 animals in the world. This suggestion did not 
 however gain much ground with naturalists, 
 partly because the old opinions of the fixity of 
 species were very strong, and partly because the 
 
MORAL TEACHINGS OF SCIENCE 21 
 
 cause of development on which Lamarck laid 
 most stress namely, the innate desire and efforts 
 of the animals themselves to improve their con- 
 dition did not rest upon proved facts. 
 
 The study of paleontology and zoology had 
 however established another conclusion, though 
 it had crept in almost unnoticed. This was that 
 animals had been destroyed by flood and famine, 
 had fought with each other, and devoured each 
 other throughout all past geological ages. 
 Struggle, privation, ferocity, disease, and death 
 had existed long before man began to be, and 
 could therefore not be the result of any action 
 of his. What then was the explanation of the per- 
 petual contest causing so much suffering and de- 
 struction of life ? Darwin answered this question 
 by his discovery of the law of "Natural Selection," 
 or the survival of the fittest in the struggle for life. 
 
 The story of how he conceived this idea and 
 spent his life in accumulating such a mass of 
 evidence as has convinced all practical naturalists 
 of its truth is now well known. Since 1858, 
 when he and Mr. Wallace together published 
 the conclusion at which they had independently 
 arrived, facts and generalisations confirming the 
 law have accumulated at a marvellous rate. In 
 
22 MORAL TEACHINGS OF SCIENCE 
 
 details there is still much division of opinion, 
 but these do not concern us now. Nearly two 
 hundred years elapsed after Newton discovered 
 the law of gravitation before Leverrier com- 
 pleted the analysis of the movements of the 
 planets round the sun according to that law. 
 In the far more complex world of life it would 
 be idle to expect that all could be explained in 
 thirty years. But even in this short time the 
 theory of the evolution of the various living 
 forms by the action of Variation, Inheritance, 
 and Natural Selection has taken such firm hold 
 on men's minds that not only naturalists and 
 those who have studied the facts, but others 
 who are quite ignorant of the origin of their 
 convictions, reason from evolutionary principles 
 every day in theology, history, and other branches 
 of knowledge, j ust as men reason from the theory 
 of gravitation without being conscious of so doing. 
 The law of the Survival of the Fittest 
 rests upon three undoubted facts. (1) Living 
 creatures multiply so rapidly that there is 
 neither room nor food for a thousandth part of 
 them, and immense numbers die without ever 
 coming to maturity. (2) Every living being 
 born into the world varies slightly from every 
 
MORAL TEACHINGS OF SCIENCE 23 
 
 other ; no two beings were ever exactly alike in 
 all particulars. (3) All living beings inherit 
 more or less the peculiarities of their parents. 
 
 Now, as the first of these facts is that count- 
 less numbers of beings must perish when young, 
 the question arises, what is it which decides 
 which shall live and multiply, and which shall 
 be crowded out and die ? Darwin's conclusion 
 was that the selection of those which shall 
 survive is made by the sharp struggle for 
 existence between all living forms. The plant 
 which can best withstand frost or drought, or 
 protect itself against animals which would other- 
 wise feed upon it ; the animal which can best 
 hide itself from its enemies, or live longest with- 
 out food, or travel great distances to find it, 
 or which can best defend itself against other 
 animals, or overcome them and prey upon them : 
 these will survive and transmit their superiority 
 to their descendants while others languish and fail. 
 
 So nature selects those living beings which 
 are best fitted for their surrounding conditions, 
 and any being which varies, however little, in a 
 way which gives it an advantage, or inherits 
 such a variation from its parents, will have a 
 better chance of surviving and passing on this 
 
24 MORAL TEACHINGS OF SCIENCE 
 
 variation to its descendants. It is by this pro- 
 cess that variations are assumed to have been 
 strengthened and accumulated, till in the course of 
 ages the numerous different forms of plants and 
 animals have been produced. Such is the broad 
 outline of the law of Natural Selection and its 
 action in causing the evolution of living forms. 
 Let us now see what we gain or lose in moral 
 teaching by the discovery of this law. 
 
 It is wondrously strange that one of the 
 most violent objections offered to Natural Selec- 
 tion has been that it makes pain and struggle 
 the foundation of all the varied forms on the 
 earth. But the pain and the struggle have 
 existed ever since life began ! The presence of 
 suffering and evil in the world is the one 
 mystery which oppresses all men, and against 
 which our nature revolts so vehemently that we 
 feel as if we could not wait till the slow unfold- 
 ing of the future shall give an explanation of it. 
 The Greek tried to solve the problem by assum- 
 ing that matter had an independent existence, 
 and that the Creator had done the best possible 
 with a stubborn material. The Persian looked 
 upon creation as the work of two rival powers, 
 one good and the other evil. The Jew, having 
 
MORAL TEACHINGS OF SCIENCE 25 
 
 arrived at the conception of one Deity, attributed 
 evil to the fall of the angels and man. All 
 three left the difficulty as great as they found 
 it, for no solution can be satisfactory which does 
 not go back to one Eternal Omnipotent First 
 Cause, the origin of the whole universe, and 
 therefore of the nature of matter, angels and 
 man alike. 
 
 In truth, neither science, philosophy, nor 
 theology can furnish a solution, for if we are 
 thoroughly honest and logical, we must confess 
 that terrible as are the suffering, the disease, 
 the grief, the misery, and the evil passions which 
 exist to some extent in all life, they must belong 
 to the scheme of the universe. To attribute 
 them to any other power than the one First 
 Cause is to suppose that some other cause exists 
 independently. This at once makes each of the 
 two powers finite and conditional, and necessitates 
 another power behind as the First Cause of both. 
 
 The only point upon which the mind can 
 really rest is the one Universal Omnipotent 
 Power 1 "transcending intuition and imagina- 
 
 1 That there is one spiritual self-conscious being, of which all that 
 is real is the activity or expression ; that we are related to this 
 spiritual being, not merely as parts of the world which is its expres- 
 sion, but as partakers in some inchoate measure of the self-conscious- 
 3 
 
26 MORAL TEACHINGS OF SCIENCE 
 
 tion," to which we can assign no limits and no 
 conditions, and to which we must refer every 
 event and tendency in the known universe. Of 
 all events therefore which seem to us either 
 evil or good, we can only say that they form 
 part of the will of the Universal Power, and it is 
 our own ignorance and extremely limited ex- 
 perience, and not some cause independent of 
 Omnipotence, that we must accuse of the feeling 
 of despair caused in us by the misery around us. 
 Far, however, from Natural Selection having 
 introduced pain and struggle into the plan of 
 life, it does slightly lift the veil of this terrible 
 mystery by affording us the first glimpse of a 
 useful purpose served by them. If the different 
 species were created once for all in their present 
 form, the constant multiplication of beings only 
 to perish while immature has no meaning. The 
 young plants stifled by their fellows, or eaten 
 off before their tender shoots can grow ; the 
 insects destroyed at all stages by birds and 
 insect-eating mammals ; the young birds them- 
 selves destroyed by storm or flood, or falling 
 
 ness through which it at once constitutes and distinguishes itself from 
 the world, that this participation is the source of morality and religion ; 
 this we take to be the vital truth which Hegel had to teach. T. H. 
 Green, Miscellanies, p. 146. 
 
MORAL TEACHINGS OF SCIENCE 27 
 
 victims to birds of prey, the herbivora wounded 
 and destroyed by the carnivora ; and these last 
 perishing by flood or famine, or by disease caused 
 by parasites feeding upon them all this round 
 of suffering, with its terror and agony, such as a 
 mother-bird feels for her threatened brood, could 
 be attributed only to the wanton prodigality of 
 nature " red in tooth and claw." 
 
 But if Natural Selection is the law by which 
 all the varied forms have been developed, then 
 at least we see that these unsuccessful lives have 
 not been in vain. They have served a useful 
 and noble purpose, for they are the material out 
 of which natural causes have selected those best 
 fitted to fill the world with living beings, adapted 
 to the full enjoyment of life so far as their struc- 
 ture permits. For if every nook and corner of the 
 earth is teeming with seeds, and eggs, and young 
 beginnings of life, only waiting for a chance to 
 start up and grow, it follows that every living 
 thing must strive to the utmost, and utilise any 
 spot in which it can succeed and escape destruc- 
 tion from others. Some, driven from the land, 
 have taken refuge in the seas and rivers, acquiring 
 in the course of ages a suitable bodily structure ; 
 others conquer the air ; others the depths under- 
 
28 MORAL TEACHINGS OF SCIENCE 
 
 ground ; while in all we can trace varied and 
 marvellous instincts developed by the long 
 education of necessity. And then, as the 
 struggle .goes on, instinct glides insensibly 
 into intelligence, and among the higher animals 
 each race, out of its own peculiar struggles, diffi- 
 culties, and successes, develops the faculties of 
 memory or attention, imagination or reason, or 
 the emotions of affection, jealousy, suspicion, 
 gratitude, fidelity, and veneration. Finally, 
 in man the brain becomes the paramount con- 
 trolling organ, and success in life falls to those 
 who inherit courage, talent, perseverance, or 
 any of the other qualities which in one way 
 or another give them an advantage in the battle 
 of life. 
 
 It is this purpose which the many dormant, 
 stunted, and unsuccessful lives have fulfilled 
 in the history of our planet, whether among 
 plants, or animals, or the human race, if the 
 theory of Natural Selection be true. And 
 though this does not in the least explain why, 
 in a scheme emanating from Omnipotence, in- 
 dividual suffering should be the stepping-stone 
 to all happy and varied existence, yet when we 
 reflect that our world is but a speck in a vast 
 
MORAL TEACHINGS OF SCIENCE 29 
 
 universe, governed by unswerving law, and tend- 
 ing we know not whither, does not the mere 
 fact that in our own immediate sphere we have 
 only now discovered a useful purpose in that 
 which before appeared positive evil, lead us to 
 trust that even in individual suffering there may 
 be a truth higher than we yet know ? If one 
 "partial evil" proves to be "universal good" in 
 our infiriitesimally brief experience, does not the 
 onus of proof that any evil cannot have its pur- 
 pose, rest with those who make the assertion ? 
 
 And this brings us to the logical conclusion 
 we must reach if evolution is to be of any service 
 in affording us a groundwork of morality ; and 
 this is that man also is the outcome of evolu- 
 tion and of the working of natural laws. 
 Nearly all naturalists are now agreed that if 
 the different species of animals have been gradu- 
 ally produced by ordinary reproduction from 
 other species man cannot be an exception. His 
 body is formed in all its parts like those of the 
 higher mammalia ; his muscles, nerves, and blood- 
 vessels, his internal organs and his brain, are 
 constructed on the same model, perform the 
 same functions, and follow the same laws as 
 theirs. He is affected by many of the same 
 
30 MORAL TEACHINGS OF SCIENCE 
 
 diseases, which he can actually take from 
 animals and communicate to them, while their 
 blood infuses fresh vigour into his, and even 
 their nerves and muscles have been successfully 
 grafted upon human beings to replace morbid 
 portions in cases of disease. Nor is this all ; 
 animals and man have in common intelligence, 
 memory, imagination, and even reason, as count- 
 less observations have shown, since attention 
 has been called to the powers of the higher 
 animals. They evince the same emotions of love 
 and hate, fear and courage, a desire for revenge, 
 and a power of self-sacrifice for their young, and 
 even often for the maimed and helpless ; and 
 though these faculties are less developed in even 
 the highest animals than in man, yet the differ- 
 ence is one " of degree and not of kind." 
 
 If it were not for a certain shrinking which 
 man feels from being classed with his humbler 
 companions, surely no one would hesitate to 
 acknowledge the physical connection between 
 them, and this shrinking arises from that 
 curious incapacity we have noticed before to 
 realise that all is the outcome of the First 
 Cause. If the three great factors which we 
 recognise in the universe Matter, Energy, and 
 
MORAL TEACHINGS OF SCIENCE 31 
 
 Life all emanate from God, why need we con- 
 cern ourselves because we cannot define the 
 origin of each, nor discern in what sense they 
 are but different manifestations of one and the 
 same mystery ? What can it matter to us in 
 what particular manner our body and faculties 
 have originated, except that we should arrive at 
 the truth concerning them as far as our limited 
 powers permit? No doubt it does concern us 
 very much to recognise that our faculties have 
 reached a point infinitely beyond those of the 
 lower animals, bringing us nearer to the higher 
 attributes of the Great Intelligence from which 
 we spring. But if we grant the evolution of 
 animal forms at all, we must allow that vast 
 powers of perception and sympathy have been 
 developed in the dog which did not exist in the 
 jelly-fish ; why then should we feel any degrada- 
 tion in claiming kinship with the faithful dog 
 because we have risen so far above him ? 
 
 On the contrary, this kinship affords us 
 exactly the basis we want for studying the rules 
 of moral conduct. We have seen how, in 
 astronomy, we have been able to arrive at great 
 certainty in the working of law, because the 
 problem is simple as compared to that of life. 
 
32 MORAL TEACHINGS OF SCIENCE 
 
 In the same way the laws governing living 
 beings will be simpler, the lower the forms we 
 study, especially if we begin with plants, in 
 which they are apparently almost as mechanical, 
 though on a different footing, from those of 
 inorganic nature ; then, having gained even a 
 rough outline of the instincts developed by 
 evolution, we shall see how these apply to the 
 conscious actions of animals, and these again to 
 the infinitely more responsible actions of self- 
 conscious man. I think, in spite of much that is 
 perplexing and incomprehensible to our limited 
 understanding, we shall find the results very far 
 removed from that doctrine of selfishness and 
 cruelty, of which the theory of Natural Selection 
 has been accused ; and, moreover, we shall learn 
 that the high moral instincts and duties which 
 all religions inculcat~ have their elementary roots 
 deep down in the sub-soil of life. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 a Flower in the crannied wall, 
 I pluck you out of the crannies ; 
 I hold you here, root and all, in my hand, 
 Little flower but if I could understand 
 What you are, root and all, and all in all, 
 I should know what God and man is." 
 
 TENNYSON. 
 
 So writes one of our greatest living poets, and in 
 these lines we find the answer to the second half 
 of the question at the head of our first chapter, 
 " Can the herbs' virtues mirip increase ? " for to 
 "know what God and man is" would be the 
 solution of the whole matter ; and even with the 
 imperfect knowledge we now possess we shall 
 find that the study of vegetable life does 
 strengthen the principles which may guide us 
 in the conduct of our own. 
 
 Not that we can attribute morality of any 
 kind to beings so purely mechanical as plants, 
 
34 MORAL TEACHINGS OF SCIENCE 
 
 that we feel at once would be absurd, and it 
 would be equally so to try and derive the founda- 
 tions of our own moral sense from them, since, 
 immediately above the very lowest forms of 
 living cells (which can scarcely be classed under 
 either kingdom), the two lines of plants and 
 animals divide, never to meet again. Plants 
 settle down to a stationary life and employ them- 
 selves in manufacturing food out of inorganic 
 matter ; and animals, feeding on the nourishment 
 which plants provide, take the road through 
 active movement to sensation arid consciousness. 
 But we are now in search of the laws of life, 
 and plants are living beings. The active matter, 
 or protoplasm, which works in a plant cell is the 
 same as that which forms the white corpuscles 
 of our own blood, and just because plants have 
 no consciousness or moral sense, we can the 
 better study in them the general laws common 
 to all life. Indeed, we shall find that in many 
 points they strangely resemble ourselves, and 
 people who have not studied the subject will be 
 surprised to learn how these passionless beings 
 injure or benefit each other, showing that the 
 bright and dark threads which we call good and 
 evil, are woven into the very fabric of life itself. 
 
MORAL TEACHINGS OF SCIENCE 35 
 
 The end and object of plant life is fully ex- 
 pressed in the words "increase, multiply, and 
 replenish the earth." Every one knows how 
 crowded a hedgerow or meadow is with plants, 
 or a thicket with bushes and undergrowth ; and 
 if a small clot of earth be taken from under any 
 of these it will be found full of seeds, as Mr. 
 Darwin has shown. He relates how he took a 
 ball of dry earth weighing six and a half ounces 
 from the dried leg of a partridge, which had 
 been kept for three years, and when the earth 
 was moistened no less than eighty-two plants 
 sprang up from this small lump. 
 
 This example serves to give us a slight 
 conception of the myriads of seeds which 
 are waiting everywhere, and the most passing 
 examination in the springtime will convince us 
 how thickly they start above ground. No sooner 
 do warmth and moisture reach the seed than the 
 germ begins to sprout, and struggles on till the 
 more weakly are cut off from one cause or another, 
 and all but one or two perish. Even among the 
 lowest forms of life we can see that it is the effort 
 to live and not the preservation of any particular 
 life which is all -important. Hence arise the 
 rivalry, the struggle, and the selection of those 
 
36 MORAL TEACHINGS OF SCIENCE 
 
 which succeed best in overcoming the difficulties 
 by which they are surrounded. At first it seems 
 almost impossible that this can have given rise 
 to all the countless varieties of plants and flowers, 
 yet if we consider the varied conditions existing 
 all over the earth's surface, the different climates, 
 altitudes, and lengths of day and night, the 
 deserts, forests, plains, mountains, and valleys, 
 the different animals which attack plants, from 
 mammals to insects and grubs, and the contest 
 between plants themselves as to which shall hold 
 the ground and live, we see how they must have 
 assumed different forms if they were to exist 
 and spread. 
 
 These conditions would determine the growth 
 of the plant, the shape of its leaves and branches, 
 and its manner of life. But there is another 
 equally important fact, namely, its reproduction, 
 and the formation and protection of the seeds 
 from which new plants are to spring. Here too 
 climate has to be reckoned with. The tender 
 ovules and pollen must be protected from heat 
 or cold, rain or dew, and from violent winds, 
 and we find the shapes of the flowers adapted in 
 various ways for this purpose. But the chief 
 cause of variation has been the necessity for 
 
MORAL TEACHINGS OF SCIENCE 37 
 
 cross-fertilisation, for all flowers require to receive 
 pollen from time to time from others of the same 
 species. For this service, plants, being station- 
 ary, are dependent on the wind and on insects, 
 and it is to the methods they have adopted for 
 attracting insects useful to their blossoms, and 
 keeping off those that are hurtful, that we owe 
 the lovely forms and the beautiful colours of 
 their flowers. 
 
 Even in the lowest sea-weeds and fresh-water 
 algse we find cross-fertilisation from plant to 
 plant going on in the water ; while, on the land, 
 among pines and firs and some of the higher 
 plants such as the hazel-nut and willow, the wind 
 carries the pollen. But the remainder of herbs, 
 shrubs, and trees are dependent on flying insects, 
 which visited them in the beginning no doubt to 
 feed on the pollen, then to suck the sweet juice 
 secreted in various parts, and at last to gather 
 the honey which the flowers began to lay up to 
 attract them. So through long ages insects and 
 flowers have worked upon each other, and any 
 one who cares can now trace for himself in the 
 works of Darwin, Wallace, Asa Gray, Muller, 
 Lubbock, Grant Allen, and others, the proofs of 
 the undoubted fact that it is the insect which 
 
38 MORAL TEACHINGS OF SCIENCE 
 
 has unconsciously turned the world into a 
 "boundless flower-garden;" and that as plants 
 owe their general form to the struggle with the 
 climate and each other, they owe their flowers to 
 their rivalry in attracting insects. 
 
 One of the first results of this active compe- 
 tition has been that thrift and perseverance are 
 strikingly developed in plant life. Each plant 
 must seek and use all it can find. 
 
 Annuals, with their thread-like roots, utilise 
 the surface of the soil and hasten to grow, to flower, 
 and to seed during the summer. They live just 
 on the limits of respectable subsistence, storing 
 in their seeds only enough to start the next 
 generation. Therefore they die after a few 
 months, and at all seasons are liable to be cut off 
 by frost or drought, as hard times kill the poor 
 and scantily-fed among men. Yet they flourish 
 in great numbers because they live without the 
 depth of soil required by more lasting plants. 
 They can also take advantage of a brief warm 
 season to run through their whole life, even in 
 places where a long, cold, cheerless winter fill 
 two-thirds of the year, for though in such 
 climates they grow stunted and weakly, they 
 flower and form their seeds. Again, they can 
 
MORAL TEACHINGS OF SCIENCE 39 
 
 utilise the short moist periods in arid countries, 
 and leave their seeds to sleep during the droughts. 
 In a word, their wants are few, and they can seize 
 opportunities not open to those which require 
 more. A whole chapter of life might be written 
 comparing these annuals with the lives of those 
 among human beings who live from " hand to 
 mouth." 
 
 Biennials take deeper root ; they store up food 
 the first year and only flower the second year 
 when their nourishment is secured and then die. 
 By their greater providence they can withstand 
 seasons in which annuals perish ; they provide 
 stronger sustenance for their seeds ; and their 
 roots and leaves produce a large proportion of 
 the food material upon which animal life subsists ; 
 but they require deeper and better soil, and may 
 be compared to those among human beings who 
 provide comforts and better life for their children, 
 though passing on no store for the future. 
 
 Perennials also take one year for green growth 
 only, then they flower sparingly even the second 
 year and go on increasing their stock in hand, so 
 that as herbs, shrubs, and trees they live for years 
 and even centuries and found families; for new 
 branch-buds start and grow each year on the old 
 
40 MORAL TEACHINGS OF SCIENCE 
 
 stock, though, if struck off and planted, they 
 become in themselves perfect plants. The world 
 would be ill provided with vegetation without 
 the rapidly-maturing annual, the food-producing 
 biennial, or the store-accumulating perennial 
 which can withstand vicissitudes to which the 
 others succumb. Here too is a lesson for man. 
 
 Thus the effort to live, controlled by the same 
 effort exercised by all life around, drives each 
 plant to work perseveringly for food, to utilise 
 every inch of available ground and opportunity, 
 to seek the light, to provide its own defences, and 
 to make its own friends ; and any plant which 
 fails to do this is cut off by those which are more 
 successful. 
 
 And side by side with these food-making 
 plants live the fungi (mushrooms and toad- 
 stools) which have lost the green colouring matter 
 and cannot make food, but take it from decaying 
 plants or animals. These plants are often wrongly 
 despised ; their advantage is that they can live in 
 dark dank spots ; their use is that they act as 
 scavengers, breaking down the hard tissues of 
 rotting tree -trunks and dead vegetation and 
 building up tender cells which soon dissolve and 
 afford manure to young seedlings in the spring. 
 
MORAL TEACHINGS OF SCIENCE 41 
 
 They are the natural result of the struggle for life 
 driving plants along any new path open to them. 
 
 So too are the smaller fungi, the moulds and 
 mildews, which, however, fall below the limits 
 of respectable subsistence and give us the first 
 glimpse of mischief workers, for they prey upon 
 their living neighbours. As smut, bunt, mildew, 
 potato-fungus, and others, they grow within seeds 
 or on leaves, roots or stems, filling the grains of 
 wheat and oats with disease in damp sunless 
 seasons, eating away the leaves of the hop, the 
 vine, or the mulberry. Their germs are always 
 ready to develop whenever unhealthy conditions 
 of climate or soil favour them, and there is scarcely 
 a plant which does not at one time or another fall 
 a victim to their ravages ; while, in other forms, 
 they set up diseases in insects, fish, mammals, and 
 even in man himself. 
 
 Such parasites answer to the debased and 
 criminal classes among men. Driven by the 
 stress of life out of the happy useful world, they 
 prey upon others, weakening and hindering them 
 in their effort to live. They have their counter- 
 part too among higher plants, just as dishonest 
 and unscrupulous adventurers are found in good 
 society. The Dodder, a plant which attaches 
 
 4 
 
42 MORAL TEACHINGS OF SCIENCE 
 
 itself to thistles, oats, flax, hops, and other plants, 
 and then decays at its root and feeds upon them, 
 is one of these ; another is the Broomrape, or 
 Eoot-cancer, which feeds on the roots of the 
 broom and gorse. Both these forms flourish 
 in our latitudes ; while in the tropics there 
 are the Balanophores and Eafflesias, and the 
 huge creepers in the forest, which suck the sap 
 out of strong trees, and strangle them as they 
 climb up to bloom in the light above. 
 
 We can view these depredators dispassionately 
 in the plant-world, for we see that they arise 
 simply by the natural efforts of plants to grow 
 wherever opportunity offers ; and even they may 
 have their use, for in many cases it is the more 
 weakly plants which become their victims, or those 
 which from age or other conditions are near- 
 ing decay. The vigorous healthy plant, neither 
 poorly-fed nor over-bloated with nourishment, 
 will often resist the attacks of mildew or smut 
 when others by its side fall victims. Thus, though 
 positive evil-workers to the individual, these para- 
 sites may be instruments of universal good. 
 
 Be this as it may, however, there is no doubt 
 that to themselves their life is debasing. As a 
 fact we find that, with the exception of those which 
 
MORAL TEACHINGS OF SCIENCE 43 
 
 belong originally to the very lowest forms of life, 
 they are always stunted and degraded types of 
 the families from which they spring. The Dodder 
 loses its true root and thrusts mere suckers into 
 the plant it strangles ; it bears no leaves and has 
 only a wiry stem and small flowers. The Balano- 
 phoresand Rafflesias have fallen even lower, almost 
 to the structure of fungi, except that they bear 
 flowers. The Balanophores, living on the roots 
 of trees, are mere fleshy lumps, each bearing a 
 spike of blossoms, and the Eafflesia has lost even 
 its stem, becoming nothing more than a gigantic 
 putrid-smelling flow^er. Here, then, we find the 
 absence of healthy effort leading to self-degrada- 
 tion even in unconscious plant-life, showing that 
 when a being ceases to be useful and industrious, 
 and exists entirely as a burden upon others and 
 hurtful to them, it becomes degraded itself, and 
 is at war with the whole better balanced world. 
 Thus the dark thread of evil appears as the 
 converse of the healthy struggle out of which 
 higher forms arise. 
 
 For when we turn from these baneful forms 
 to vigorous vegetation we find that the interaction 
 of plants with each other, and with animals, is so 
 intimate that there are none which, in fulfilling 
 
44 MORAL TEACHINGS OF SCIENCE 
 
 their own life, do not do something for the good 
 of others. Let us consider the case of self-defence. 
 A plant grows thorns or bristles, or secretes a 
 bitter poison to save its leaves from being de- 
 voured, but in so doing it secures its own growth, 
 and not only purifies the air but bears flowers in 
 which insects find pollen and honey. More than 
 this, the very same organs of a plant often serve 
 both for defence against foes and for guidance to 
 friends. The bristles and hairs on a flower-stalk, 
 or even in the flower itself, which prevent wing- 
 less insects from creeping in and stealing honey 
 without carrying pollen to other flowers, also serve 
 as path-finders, guiding flying insects along the 
 right road to the hidden nectary, so that they 
 necessarily rub themselves against the anthers or 
 the stigma on their way. Numerous cases of these 
 path -finders occur among the Labiatse (dead- 
 nettles and their allies), the Centaurese (corn- 
 cockles), and in the Scrophularinse, (fox-gloves, 
 and mulleins). 
 
 Another device for attracting as well as re- 
 pelling is found in the strong oils secreted in the 
 petals of flowers which serve both as distasteful 
 flavours to keep off grazing animals and as scents 
 to attract bees or moths ; while an example of 
 
MORAL TEACHINGS OF SCIENCE 45 
 
 mutual benefit occurs when low-growing trees 
 and bushes, especially if they are prickly or 
 distasteful in any way to grazing animals, form 
 a protection for annuals and small plants which 
 grow under them, at the same time that they 
 shade them from the scorching heat of the sun. 
 These small plants, on the other hand, help to 
 keep the ground moist around the tree-roots, 
 and their leaves decaying every year form 
 manure which is washed down into the soil. 
 
 Endless examples such as these of protection 
 and assistance, both between different species of 
 plants and between plants and insects, will occur 
 to the reader when once his mind is directed to 
 them. But these will serve to show that although 
 the laws of life are undoubtedly stern, and each 
 individual must strive for its existence, yet mutual 
 help is a great factor of success even among plants. 
 We actually find them using persuasion toward 
 their pillagers, as in the case of the bush-vetch 
 ( Vicia sepium), the wild cherry (Prunus avium), 
 and numberless others which have nectaries in 
 their leaves to tempt ants and other creeping 
 insects to seek honey there, so diverting them from 
 the flowers which they would injure. Again they 
 offer many tempting invitations to their friends 
 
46 MORAL TEACHINGS OF SCIENCE 
 
 in the shape of fruits, as when, for example, the 
 plum or the cherry provide a luscious feast 
 for birds, in order that they may carry the stone 
 away and drop it in a new place to grow. Another 
 remarkable example is the nutmeg, of which the 
 fruit bursts open on the tree, exposing the bright 
 red-coloured mace surrounding the seed. This 
 mace is a bait for pigeons, which delight in it 
 and swallow with it the nutmeg, which passes 
 undigested through them, and finds a fresh home 
 in which to germinate. 
 
 A still more striking instance of hospitality, 
 this time with a view to protection, was observed 
 in Nicaragua by Mr. Belt, where small stinging 
 honey-eating ants live on a plant called the bull's- 
 horn thorn. This plant bears thorns which are 
 soft and full of a sweet pulpy substance when 
 young, and upon this the ants feed, while they 
 bore a hole in the coating of the thorn for entrance 
 and exit. By and by the thorn, now hollo w, 
 hardens, and in it they live and rear their young, 
 sipping the honey which is secreted at the base 
 of each pair of leaflets, and feeding upon a little 
 yellow fruit-like body growing on the leaves. 
 These yellow fruits ripen one after the other, and 
 so the ants are kept running over the young and 
 
MORAL TEACHINGS OF SCIENCE 47 
 
 tender leaves. Now, why should this plant feed 
 and shelter a whole army of ants ? Simply 
 because it has very dangerous enemies in the leaf- 
 cutting ants and grazing animals which destroy 
 its foliage, and by affording shelter and food to 
 these sharp stinging ants which throng out in 
 numbers directly a branch is shaken, the shrub 
 is protected from attacks. This one case, which 
 has been established, may afford a clue to many 
 others where ants and insects of various kinds 
 inhabit parts of plants without doing them an 
 injury; for investigations into these questions are 
 still quite in their infancy. 
 
 Meanwhile, do not such examples as these 
 show that life is not a mere selfish warfare, but 
 that mutual help and service are among the very 
 laws of existence, and that the truly fittest to 
 survive are those who, in working for self-preser- 
 vation, promote also the good of others ? This 
 is still more clearly seen in the mutual adaptation 
 of plants and insects ; for flies, butterflies, moths, 
 beetles, and bees all visit and help to fertilise 
 flowers, and in each case there is some special 
 adaptation of the insect to the flower, and the 
 flower to the insect which visits it. The size of 
 the fly, the length of the proboscis, the weight of 
 
48 MORAL TEACHINGS OF SCIENCE 
 
 the insect, the manner in which it enters the 
 flower, the rapidity with which it flies from one 
 plant to another, are all-important ; as are also 
 the position of the honey in the blossom, the 
 time when the stamens ripen, the hour of the 
 day in which the flower opens, or at which it 
 gives out its scent, besides all the marvellous 
 contrivances for conveying the pollen to the 
 proper part of the insect, so that it may reach the 
 stigma of the next flower it visits. 
 
 The butterfly can reach to the bottom of a 
 tube inaccessible to the bee, the humble-bee can 
 weigh down petals and obtain honey or pollen 
 which the little honey-bee is too light to uncover. 
 Moreover, we find that bees visit many more 
 flowers, and also flowers of more complicated 
 structure than other insects. Why ? Because 
 the gathering of honey has become the work of 
 the bee's life, therefore it is the insect most 
 useful to the flowers. So plant and bee have 
 developed together, those plants surviving whose 
 flowers by degrees hid their pollen or their honey 
 most skilfully from vagrant insects, yet leaving 
 always some clue by colour or marking to guide 
 the bee ; and the bee little by little quickening 
 in intelligence, because those which found their 
 
MORAL TEACHINGS OF SCIENCE 49 
 
 way best to the most useful flowers would both 
 flourish themselves and propagate the plants 
 which yielded them their food. 
 
 Even here we, however, have examples of the 
 balance wavering between usefulness and mischief- 
 working. Many humble-bees and beetles try to 
 gnaw their way through flowers to the honey, 
 when they cannot enter from above ; and small 
 creeping insects, as we have seen, find their way 
 through cracks and crevices. Then at once 
 antagonism and defence are provoked, and 
 those plants survive best which can circumvent 
 marauders. 
 
 Some flowers like the Campions (Silena in- 
 flata) have the calyx inflated so that the pro- 
 boscis of the bee cannot reach the honey after 
 it has gnawed a hole ; others, among which the 
 Proliferous Pink (Dianthus prolifer) is a striking 
 example, have their calyx and bracts stiff and 
 hard, so that they cannot be bitten. In others, 
 again, sticky glands, and hairs on the flower 
 stalk, are common protections against creeping 
 insects ; as in the sticky Lychnis (Lychnis 
 viscaria), from one flower stalk of which Pro- 
 fessor Kerner collected sixty-four small insects, 1 
 
 1 Flowers and their Unbidden Guests, p. 53. 
 
50 MORAL TEACHINGS OF SCIENCE 
 
 and in the Clammy Groundsel (Senecio viscosus), 
 which has a dense covering of exuding hairs, 
 through which creeping insects cannot pass 
 without becoming imbedded in the slime. 
 
 Thus, we see aggression at once met by an- 
 tagonism ; while attempts to appropriate the 
 savings of others (namely, the stored honey), 
 without rendering service in return, are defeated 
 even in mechanical plant-life by all kinds of 
 devices, the very attack actually bringing about 
 the defence, by destroying the chance of the 
 fertilisation and production of young of such 
 individuals as are least protected. 
 
 Lastly, in some cases, the effects of taking 
 food without giving an equivalent recoil on the 
 insects themselves, and we have a curious illus- 
 tration of defence becoming aggression. We 
 have seen how, on the viscid lychnis, dying 
 insects were found, held there by the gummy 
 secretion which keeps them away from the 
 flower ; and the spurges protect themselves in 
 a similar manner by a thick white fluid which 
 oozes out of the stalk when it is pierced by an 
 ant's claws, thus making him a prisoner. Other 
 plants, such as the Bromelias, keep creeping in- 
 sects at bay by a stiff rosette of leaves near the 
 
MORAL TEACHINGS OF SCIENCE 51 
 
 ground, forming a cup which holds rain and de\v, 
 in which the intruders are drowned. 
 
 So far the plants only protect themselves. 
 But the Mountain Butterwort (Pinguicula 
 alpina), the Sundews (Drosera), and Venus's 
 Fly- Trap (Dioncea muscipula), have glands on 
 their leaves which not only hold the insects, but 
 digest the juices of their body for food. Again, 
 the leaves of the Side -Saddle Flowers (Sarra- 
 cenia) of America, and the Pitcher - Plants 
 (Nepenthes) of the Indian archipelago have been 
 converted into buckets, or pitchers, holding 
 water, in which the victims are drowned and 
 their juices digested by glands lining the 
 pitcher. 
 
 Here we have the tables turned with a venge- 
 ance, plants feeding on animals instead of animals 
 on plants, and as this is our first example of 
 animals killed for food, let us pause to consider 
 what it implies. Some would call it cruelty 
 and liken it to the creation of disease by para- 
 sites. But be not too hasty. To be crippled and 
 disabled in the work of life, we all allow to 
 be an evil ; since an unhealthy being, whether 
 plant or animal, is at a disadvantage in the 
 struggle for life. But death, which ends this 
 
52 MORAL TEACHINGS OF SCIENCE 
 
 struggle, cannot be regarded as cruel, for the 
 healthy development and not the duration of 
 any one life is the important point. " Death," 
 said Socrates, " cannot be an evil, since it happens 
 to all men." He might have said, to all living 
 beings, and since the very existence of such an 
 immense variety of creatures depends upon their 
 feeding one upon the other, this universal law of 
 life cannot be a wrong, nor even an evil, except 
 so far as suffering accompanies it. 
 
 There remains still another feature of plant- 
 life which, fanciful though it may appear, is 
 yet worthy of notice. This is the sacrifice to 
 some extent of certain individual blossoms for 
 the good of the whole group of blossoms, and 
 therefore of the plant. 
 
 We all know that some small flowers, such as 
 the Hemlock and the Elder-Blossom, are grouped 
 thickly together in one inflorescence, so as to 
 produce a mass of white or other colour ; while 
 in the Thistle, Dandelion, and Scabious this is 
 carried farther a number of florets, each a per- 
 fect blossom forming its own seed, being crowded 
 into one dense flower-head. The object of this 
 is clearly to make the flower conspicuous and 
 attract insect visits, so that pollen may be 
 
MORAL TEACHINGS OF SCIENCE 53 
 
 brought to many florets, and a large number of 
 seeds formed. 
 
 Now a flower-head becomes much more con- 
 spicuous when the small tubular flowers are 
 surrounded by a crown of large petals, whether 
 white or bright coloured, as in the daisy or 
 dandelion. This advantage has led some plants, 
 such as the Viburnum or Guelder - Eose, the 
 Knapweeds, the Sunflowers, the Bur- marigold, 
 and others, to give up forming seed in the outer 
 florets, and to use the material in growing large 
 petals striking to the eye. Thus these florets 
 are deprived of their natural function in order 
 to increase the fertility of the inner ones, and 
 in so doing strengthen the whole community. 
 
 As we have said before, it would be mani- 
 festly absurd to call this self-sacrifice when 
 speaking of the mere adaptation of the flowers of 
 a plant to its welfare. Yet it does show that the 
 laws of nature recognise every variation which 
 tends to the better success of the individual or 
 the community, by Natural Selection rigidly 
 weeding out those which are less successful ; and 
 though this seems a very unimportant modifi- 
 cation in plants, yet when we come to consider 
 insects, we shall find that purely structural 
 
54 MORAL TEACHINGS OF SCIENCE 
 
 changes of the same nature (see p. 65) do lead 
 through natural selection to the development of 
 such a noble trait as self-devotion. 
 
 And here we must end our very brief sketch 
 of plant-life, content for the present with having 
 suggested a few pregnant thoughts, and learned 
 one great lesson namely, that among plants 
 injury to others calls forth opposition, and re- 
 coils upon the injurer ; while, on the other hand, 
 those succeed best who, in fulfilling their own 
 life, also compass the good of other beings. 
 Thus, through struggle and mutual help, has 
 come to pass the development of highly or- 
 ganised, beautiful, and wonderful forms even in 
 the plant world. And we must remember that 
 this has not taken place by special guidance 
 along certain beneficent lines, since degradation 
 and partial deformities result as by-products of 
 the struggle for life ; but that the overwhelm- 
 ing preponderance of healthy, happy, and varied 
 existence has been brought about by the steady 
 working of natural laws among which the 
 struggle to survive and the constant action of 
 natural selection are the most important. Can 
 we question that here we have a foundation never 
 to be shaken by any change of opinion or dogma ? 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 " How wonderful ! that even 
 
 The passions, prejudices, interests 
 That sway the meanest being, the weak touch 
 
 That moves the finest nerve 
 
 And in one human brain 
 Causes the faintest thought, becomes a link 
 
 In the great chain of nature." SHELLEY. 
 
 FORTIFIED now by two general conclusions, that 
 life works by definite laws, and that, in the 
 struggle for existence, self-preservation and 
 mutual help work hand in hand, let us turn to 
 animal life, in which the problem is much more 
 complex. For, in the first place, the mere fact 
 that even the lowest animal forms move in search 
 of food, makes us assume purpose in their in- 
 stincts where we have only recognised mechani- 
 cal action in plants ; and secondly, as the great 
 naturalist Huber remarked, " a little dose of 
 judgment or reason comes into play even in 
 animals low in the scale of nature." 
 
56 MORAL TEACHINGS OF SCIENCE 
 
 We can no more decide at what point this 
 new element is developed, in the ascending scale 
 of life, than we can tell when a child begins to 
 think. But we cannot doubt that such crea- 
 tures as an octopus washing and tending its 
 young, or an earwig gathering them around her 
 as a hen does her chickens, do understand in 
 some way what they are doing ; and when we 
 come to such insects as spiders, bees, and ants, 
 we observe that they hesitate, choose, and decide 
 what they will do, and even recognise when they 
 have made mistakes. 
 
 And together with this dawning of judg- 
 ment and reason comes emotion, and these 
 little creatures exhibit anger, jealousy, curiosity, 
 playfulness, caution, and fidelity. No one can 
 doubt that an ant has at least an instinctive 
 perception of its duty, so to speak, to the 
 community ; that workers show courage when 
 they fight to the death for the cocoons under 
 their care ; or that the robber -bees creep 
 stealthily into tbe strange hives, quite aware 
 that they will be killed if detected. Yet blind 
 instinct still holds these insects with a firm grasp, 
 and they perform their duties far more mechani- 
 cally and unerringly than even the lowest of 
 
MORAL TEACHINGS OF SCIENCE 57 
 
 the vertebrate animals ; therefore, we shall do 
 well to glance at them before we pass on to 
 what more immediately concerns us. 
 
 As in plants, so in insects, to feed and multi- 
 ply is the main object of existence, and the 
 peculiarities of their structure can all be traced 
 directly or indirectly to these necessities, though 
 very much complicated by the number of 
 different stages in their lives as larva, chrysalis, 
 and perfect insect. In the first stage, feeding is 
 their whole life ; in the second, those which 
 become quite still must find protection during 
 their sleep ; and in the third, feeding and egg- 
 laying, going hand in hand, have led to the 
 greater part of the marvellous adaptations and 
 defences of plants and perfect insects. 
 
 The feeding stage need not occupy us long, 
 except to glance once more at the curious fact 
 of parasites. Insects multiply at an almost in- 
 credible rate, and though no doubt in early 
 geological times, when the cricket and the centi- 
 pede fed in the forests out of which our present 
 coal was formed, plants were their only food, yet 
 soon the pressure of life drove some, such as 
 dragon-flies, to feed upon others ; others, such as 
 beetles and wasps, to devour decomposing matter, 
 5 
 
$8 MORAL TEACHINGS OF SCIENCE 
 
 acting as scavengers ; while out of almost every 
 family of insect life some are parasites during the 
 first part of their existence. 
 
 And here we find the same lesson as in plants. 
 Any grub or caterpillar, which comes from an 
 egg placed by the mother inside some other 
 creature, is soft and of low structure, with no 
 limbs, having no need for them. Yet when it 
 emerges from the chrysalis state into that of an 
 active being, which must seek its own food 
 and a place to lay its eggs, the full-grown insect 
 has wings, antennse, and other parts delicate 
 and beautiful. In some cases, however, as in 
 the stylops (a parasite living on the humble- 
 bees), the mother does not cease to be a parasite, 
 but lives on, a blind, legless creature, giving 
 birth to her young ones without ever becoming 
 perfect herself. 
 
 All this is in accordance with the survival of 
 the fittest in the struggle for life, for when 
 driven to a torpid existence, sapping the life of 
 others, it is a saving to the parasite not to 
 develop parts it will never use, or to put them 
 on only when bursting into active life. Yet at 
 the same time it emphasises the irrevocable law 
 that effort raises, and dependence lowers, warn- 
 
MORAL TEACHINGS OF SCIENCE 59 
 
 ing us, as rational beings, of the danger of 
 drifting into helplessness and dependence our- 
 selves, or of driving others into it either by our 
 own greed or injustice, or by the indolence 
 which induces many to bestow indiscriminate 
 charity rather than take the trouble to help 
 others to help themselves. 
 
 But this is anticipating. Eeturning to the 
 insects, we find that, on the one hand, they have 
 endless offensive devices for protection and attack; 
 as, for example, the nauseous taste of some cater- 
 pillars and beetles, protecting them from birds, 
 or the bristles of the hairy caterpillar, which 
 serve the same purpose, and also prevent the 
 ichneumon-fly from laying its eggs under their 
 skin ; their constant movement making it diffi- 
 cult for her to insert the long sheath or ovipositor, 
 through which she passes her eggs, into the 
 bodies of her living victims. In like manner 
 the horny covering of the weevils, the powerful 
 nippers of many beetles, as, for example, the stag- 
 beetles, the stings of bees, wasps, and of some ants, 
 the strong fluid that the bombardier-beetle squirts 
 back at its pursuer, are all modes of defence. 
 
 Yet, on the other hand, even among the 
 lower insects mutual help is found. The dung- 
 
60 MORAL TEACHINGS OF SCIENCE 
 
 beetles (Scarabceidce) will assist each other 
 in rolling up the pellets of dung which they 
 bury with themselves for food. Many cater- 
 pillars weave tents in common ; thus the cater- 
 pillars of one of the fritillaries (Melitcea Cinxia) 
 join together and form a pyramidal silk tent, 
 which shelters them from sun, rain, and attacks 
 of birds. When they have exhausted the food 
 near this tent, they move on and weave another ; 
 and in the winter they make their shelter 
 rounder and stronger, and lie heaped up upon each 
 other, sometimes as many as a hundred together, 
 till spring comes, when they separate, each to 
 form its own chrysalis. 1 The processionary cater- 
 pillar does the same, and these insects travel 
 over the trunks of trees in long lines, a shock 
 given to the first, passing all along the line as 
 if giving warning. Lastly, in ants there can be 
 no doubt that warning is given from one to 
 another, and when any member is in danger 
 the others are uneasy. M. Huber relates how, 
 when he disturbed some ants which were drink- 
 ing, one who had started away turned back 
 and pushed and struck three others till he drove 
 them home ; a fourth was restive, but in spite 
 
 1 Kirby and Spence, Entomology, p. 301. 
 
MORAL TEACHINGS OF SCIENCE 61 
 
 of his menacing jaws the other dragged him 
 away by the hind-leg till he was in safety. 
 
 A study of the adaptations for self-preservation 
 among the numberless forms of insects, will repay 
 any student, who will watch nature carefully 
 for proofs that survival of the fittest forms has 
 developed in each type its beauty, its peculiarities, 
 and its powers, creating all the wealth of the 
 insect world; while, at the same time, he will 
 come across many unexpected instances of 
 mutual help and protection. 
 
 The most important adaptations, however, as 
 bearing on our present subject, are connected with 
 the second great instinct of reproduction ; for 
 this, which in plants has given rise indirectly to 
 the beauty of their flowers, lies in animals at 
 the root of the far more important qualities of 
 love and sympathy. 
 
 In feeding, a creature supplies its own wants ; 
 in multiplying and providing for its young, it 
 labours for those " other-selves," to whom it will 
 often sacrifice its life. It is in insects especially 
 that we can best trace how a mother's care 
 was at first a mere mechanical instinct, only 
 a step above the protection of the seed in 
 plants. For among all the lower insects the 
 
62 MORAL TEACHINGS OF SCIENCE 
 
 mother does not live to see the eggs hatched. 
 Yet she will take great trouble and risk to lay 
 them in safety, on plants quite different from 
 those on which she herself is feeding, though it 
 is true that during her early caterpillar life she 
 was nourished upon them. Thus the common 
 cabbage butterfly sips the blossoms of the flower- 
 garden but goes among the cabbages to lay her 
 eggs. The cockchafer, which, when flying, feeds 
 on the leaves of trees, buries herself in the earth 
 to lay, so that the grubs when hatched eat the 
 tender grass roots. The dragon-fly lives on 
 insects in the air, yet drops down on the leaf of 
 a water-plant to deposit her ova, which yield 
 grubs whose life for more than two years is 
 spent at the bottom of the stream. 
 
 More wonderful than all these, the honey- 
 sipping sphex, or sand-wasp, burrows a tunnel 
 in a bank, lays her egg in a hollow at the end 
 of it, paralyses grasshoppers by stinging them at 
 those points in their body where the nerve-cords 
 meet, lays them alive yet motionless by the side 
 of the egg and then closes the opening. 1 In this 
 way she provides separate tunnels and food for 
 several eggs, so that the grubs, which she never 
 
 1 Fabre, Souvenirs Entomologiques. 
 
MORAL TEACHINGS OF SCIENCE 63 
 
 sees, find fresh food ready for them when they 
 awake. All this is done so mechanically that a 
 sphex, whose cell was emptied both of egg and 
 food, after going in as usual and looking round, 
 went on where she had left off and closed the 
 cell with nothing in it. Yet so determined and 
 earnest are they in their work that no danger 
 or difficulty hinders them. 
 
 From an instinct so strong as this, it is quite 
 natural that there should spring a tendency to 
 watch over the young when the mother lives to 
 see them ; especially as, on the theory of natural 
 selection, the best mothers would rear the most 
 offspring, and thus the tendency would increase. 
 And, in fact, even among lower insects we find the 
 cockroach helping her young out of the egg-sack, 
 and the earwig hatching her eggs and gathering 
 the young around her, as a hen gathers her 
 chickens ; while the hunting spiders carry their 
 egg-bags under their body, and will fight for 
 them till death. One of these spiders (Lycosa 
 saccata) not only opens the bag for her young to 
 escape when hatched, but carries them upon her 
 body and feeds them till they cast their first 
 coat. 1 Then we have those solitary bees and 
 
 1 Kirby and Spence, p. 205. 
 
64 MORAL TEACHINGS OF SCIENCE 
 
 wasps which form a home and store food for 
 their family ; and lastly, the bee, wasp, and ant 
 communities, where numbers are banded to- 
 gether for helpfulness and security. 
 
 And here occurs a remarkable feature peculiar 
 to insects, yet teaching how, in the struggle for 
 existence, self-devotion and self-sacrifice for the 
 good of all have been developed out of the 
 maternal instinct. For in the homes of bees and 
 ants the workers are neuters or imperfect females, 
 which never become mothers, and yet tend and 
 watch over the eggs and cocoons of the young as 
 if they were their own. They nurse them, clean 
 them, play with them, and in the case of ants, 
 lead them about the nest and educate them, and 
 will risk their lives to protect them. Such 
 naturalists as Huber, M c Cook, Forel, and others 
 who have studied the lives of ants, can scarcely 
 find terms strong enough to express their 
 admiration for their industry, intelligence, and 
 self-denying care of the nest ; especially in the 
 case of the slave ants, carried away from their 
 own nests in the cocoon, yet when full-grown, 
 feeding, nursing, cleaning, and working for the 
 species of ant which has taken them captive. 
 
 But what concerns us chiefly here, is that 
 
MORAL TEACHINGS OF SCIENCE 65 
 
 these communities teach us how, even among 
 insects, co-operation, and some self-abnegation 
 on the part of the individual have been developed 
 for the good of all. We saw the beginnings of 
 this even in the mechanical life of plants 
 (p. 53), where the reproduction of some florets 
 in the composite flowers was sacrificed to the 
 general attraction of the flower for insects ; and 
 now we find the same sterility induced in insects 
 for the welfare of the whole community, while 
 yet the working bees and ants show as great an 
 attachment and devotion to the young as if they 
 themselves were the mothers. 
 
 In the overwhelming pressure of insect -life it 
 is evident that the solitary bee, such as the antho- 
 phora or the osmia, which has to lay the eggs, 
 build the comb, store the honey, and nurse the 
 young is, other conditions being equal, at a great 
 disadvantage compared with a community in 
 which the queen bee only provides the eggs, . 
 and the workers, stopped in their growth at the 
 neuter stage, use the maternal instinct entirely 
 for the good of the hive. And so true are these 
 instincts of industry and devotion to the com- 
 munity that neither in the bee-hive nor the ant's 
 nest is there, so far as we can detect, any leader 
 
66 MORAL TEACHINGS OF SCIENCE 
 
 or master to constrain each to do her duty. The 
 long inherited habits induced by the survival of 
 those mother bees or ants which gave birth to 
 steady working communities, seem to be sufficient 
 to keep all in order, though, as we saw when one 
 ant wished to take the other out of danger (p. 61), 
 it is possible for an ant to have "a will of her 
 
 own." 
 
 Lest, however, we should rank these insects 
 higher than they really are, we must note 
 here a strange fact which has also its signifi- 
 cance. Among nearly all the forms of lower 
 life till we come to vertebrates, the father does 
 nothing for the young ; his use is purely to 
 fertilise the egg -laying mother. When this is 
 accomplished, the males and many of the females 
 among ants die in the open air, destroyed by 
 rain or devoured by birds, and the females 
 which survive pull off their wings and return to 
 the old nest or found a new one. Among wasps 
 the males are more useful, for they act as 
 scavengers, sweeping and clearing the passages 
 of the nest ; but as wasps lay up no food for 
 the winter, the males and workers all die off as 
 the cold season comes, leaving only a few queen- 
 wasps to start fresh communities in the spring. 
 
MORAL TEACHINGS OF SCIENCE 67 
 
 Among bees, however, an apparently cruel 
 scene takes place, for as winter draws near the 
 workers turn the males or drones out of the 
 hive and sting them to death. The reason for 
 this is clear. In winter food will be scarce, no 
 idle mouths can be fed, and the drones never 
 work, and are many in number. They have 
 become, in fact, though from no fault of their 
 own, a burden on the community, and as such 
 are destroyed. Probably the speedy death is 
 more merciful than the slow starvation among 
 wasps, yet this wholesale destruction of fellow- 
 citizens reminds us that individual sympathy 
 belongs chiefly to creatures higher in the scale 
 of life. In insects the instinct of self-preser- 
 vation reaches its utmost development in the 
 preservation of the community, and personal 
 affection for special individuals is rare. 
 
 On the other hand we can observe among 
 insects the evil side of self-interest in the form of 
 selfishness and self-indulgence appearing side by 
 side with self-devotion. From time to time 
 among bees robberies are committed on other 
 hives, sometimes by solitary bees, sometimes by 
 an army, which enters a neighbour's community 
 to steal the honey ; and when this happens on 
 
68 MORAL TEACHINGS OF SCIENCE 
 
 a large scale, the robber bees become regular 
 marauders, collect no honey of their own, and 
 often destroy a whole bee -stand. Ants, too, 
 have their wars, sometimes for a disputed plot 
 of ground, sometimes for the possession of the 
 aphides or plant-lice, which yield the sweet 
 liquid the ants love so much, and to obtain 
 which they will even tend the aphides and keep 
 them underground on the roots of plants as a 
 milkman keeps cows in his sheds. Among certain 
 species of ants sanguinary wars also occur for 
 the purpose of making slaves; and here, again, we 
 meet with the lesson of degradation following 
 upon self-indulgence, for while the individuals of 
 one species of slave-making ants have not yet 
 lost all sense of industry, but work with their cap- 
 tives, those of another species (Polyergus rufes- 
 cens) have become quite helpless and die from 
 want of food when their slaves are taken from 
 them. They only retain one useful weapon their 
 pointed mandibles, with which they fight when 
 they attack a nest to steal the slave cocoons. 
 
 With the ants we reach the highest develop- 
 ment of insects ; and now when we turn back 
 and start along another line that of vertebrates 
 
MORAL TEACHINGS OF SCIENCE 69 
 
 we find greater possibilities and promise of 
 higher qualities from the very outset. For here 
 intelligence, individual experience, and reason 
 begin gradually to supersede fixed instinct ; and, 
 as each individual life becomes its own centre, 
 creatures live in pairs or family groups, and the 
 father now, for the first time, takes the position 
 of protector and provider. 
 
 Even among fish the stickleback builds a nest 
 in the water and coaxes or drives the mother into 
 it to lay her eggs, which he defends till the young 
 fish are strong enough to swim about and feed 
 themselves; and among pipe-fishes it is the father 
 who carries the eggs in a pouch till they are 
 hatched. The young of the great pipe-fish, 
 which lives in our bays and harbours, even 
 take refuge when alarmed in the father's pouch 
 after they have begun to swim about. Among 
 amphibians the obstetric frog (Alytes obstetri- 
 cans) takes the eggs from the mother, and twist- 
 ing them in strings round his hind-legs, carries 
 them in the water till the tadpoles emerge. 
 Among reptiles, however, we have no instances 
 of paternal care, though the mother, both among 
 crocodiles and snakes, often watches over and 
 protects her young. 
 
70 MORAL TEACHINGS OF SCIENCE 
 
 But when we rise above these cold-blooded 
 animals to birds, the attention of the male bird 
 to his mate or mates, and his care of the } r oung, 
 is often as true and steadfast as among the best 
 of human beings. Not only do both birds, 
 male and female, work together in preparing 
 the nest, but in some birds, as, for instance, 
 the puffin, the father digs the tortuous burrow 
 about ten feet deep in the earth ready for the 
 eggs. Among nightingales and other birds the 
 father feeds the mother regularly while she is 
 sitting, while in some cases, such as the dotterel 
 and the ostrich, he often takes her place on the 
 nest. All books on birds are full of touching 
 anecdotes of the affection of parents for their 
 nestlings and for each other, and any one who 
 has ventured too near a brood of turkeys or 
 geese will have learnt by experience that male 
 turkeys and ganders can protect their young. 
 
 Moreover, as individual experience and educa- 
 tion now begin to take partly the place of 
 instinct, the father and mother together guide 
 and teach their young. While a butterfly 
 takes to the wing at once on leaving the 
 chrysalis, and sips honey from the flowers with- 
 out any need of example, the young birds have 
 
MORAL TEACHINGS OF SCIENCE 71 
 
 to be taught to fly, to find their food, and 
 to recognise different dangers ; and when we 
 remember how many thousands die in the early 
 spring, we can understand how those will best 
 survive and flourish whose parents develop the 
 greatest amount of intelligence and affectionate 
 care and devotion. 
 
 Therefore, we are not surprised to find that 
 birds become social and form communities, either 
 for seeking their food and migrating, as among 
 field-fares, starlings, swallows, and others, or for 
 life, as among the rooks. It is among these 
 last that duty to the community is probably 
 carried to its highest point among birds. Thus 
 rooks are known to place a sentinel to watch for 
 danger while the rest feed, and if he fail in his 
 duty he is judged and pecked to death. Young 
 birds also, which begin by stealing twigs from 
 others to build their nest, are soon taught a 
 
 * o 
 
 better morality, for several of the older birds 
 unite to tear their nest to pieces till they do 
 their own work honestly. On the other hand, 
 rooks have been known to feed a blind or a 
 wounded companion, and even to make attempts 
 to release one caught in a snare. 
 
 One of the most touching instances, however, 
 
72 MORAL TEACHINGS OF SCIENCE 
 
 of devotion to a comrade is given by that very 
 reliable self-taught naturalist, Thomas Edward, 
 as occurring among the terns or sea -swallows, 
 which live together in colonies, laying their 
 eggs on the sea-shore, on marshes, or sandy 
 shingle. Having wounded one of these birds 
 on the coast of BanfTshire, he relates : " I beheld, 
 to my utter astonishment and surprise, two 
 un wounded terns take hold of their disabled 
 comrade, one at each wing, lift him out of the 
 water, and bear him out seawards. They were 
 followed by two other birds. After being carried 
 about six or seven yards, he was let gently down 
 again, when he was taken up in a similar manner 
 by the two who had been hitherto inactive. In 
 this way they continued to carry him alternately 
 until they conveyed him to a rock at a consider- 
 able distance, upon which they landed him in 
 safety. 
 
 " Having recovered my self-possession I made 
 toward the rock, wishing to obtain the prize 
 which had been so unceremoniously snatched 
 from my grasp. I was observed, however, 
 by the terns, and instead of four, I had, in 
 a short time, a whole swarm round me. 
 On my near approach to the rock, I once 
 
MORAL TEACHINGS OF SCIENCE 73 
 
 more beheld two of them take hold of the 
 wounded bird, as they had done already, and 
 bear him out to sea in triumph, far beyond 
 my reach. This, had I been so inclined, I could 
 no doubt have prevented, but I willingly allowed 
 them to perform, without molestation, an act 
 of mercy, and to exhibit an instance of affection 
 which man himself need not be ashamed to 
 imitate." 1 
 
 Thus we see how, with quickened intelligence 
 and social habits, affection and sympathy enter the 
 life of birds, probably much more fully even than 
 we can trace. Yet in them, as in mankind, we can 
 also trace in many instances the instinct of self- 
 preservation conflicting with that of self-devo- 
 tion ; as, for example, when migratory birds have 
 a late brood not yet fledged when the time 
 arrives for starting on the autumn journey. 
 In this case there are examples on the one hand of 
 a mother leaving her young behind, and on the 
 other of her staying to face the winter with them. 
 
 When from birds we pass on to mammalia, 
 whose young are born alive and still more help- 
 less, the necessity for care and attention to the 
 
 1 Smiles, Life of Edward, p. 240. 
 6 
 
74 MORAL TEACHINGS OF SCIENCE 
 
 mother while she is suckling and tending her 
 little ones calls out more and more the instinct 
 of the father to provide food and defend his 
 family. So we find the males strong and power- 
 ful in the lion, bearing antlers in the stag, tusks 
 in the boar, horns in the antelope and buffalo, 
 while father and mother alike develop cunning 
 and the necessary qualities for finding food and 
 providing for themselves and their young. With 
 courage, too, comes tenderness and affection for 
 those protected, and with increased danger, in- 
 creased intelligence and devices to meet it. 
 
 Thus when we reach the higher animals, such 
 as the elephant, the dog, and the monkey, we 
 find that the battle of life through long ages 
 has developed in them, memory, imagination, 
 and no small amount of reason and judg- 
 ment ; and together with these the emotions of 
 love and hate, courage and timidity, emulation 
 and gratitude, suspicion and curiosity, and at any 
 rate in dogs and elephants, the rudiments of 
 what we call conscience, shown by a sense of 
 shame when they have done a thing for which 
 they have once been punished. 
 
 Instances of intelligence and affection among 
 the higher animals are so well known that it is 
 
MORAL TEACHINGS OF SCIENCE 75 
 
 scarcely necessary to quote them. Every one 
 knows how the lion remains with his family till 
 the cubs are grown, protecting the mother and 
 teaching the young to hunt, and also that most 
 animals among the carnivora are excellent par- 
 ents, though only wolves, wild dogs, and jackals, 
 become social, and hunt in packs. Among the 
 herbivora, on the other hand, where the animals 
 have to defend themselves against the attacks of 
 wild beasts, social life, and services rendered from 
 one animal to another, are rather the rule than the 
 exception. Eabbits, though timid arid rather 
 stupid animals, stamp with their hind feet to 
 warn their comrades of danger ; even sheep do 
 the same with their forefeet, and an old ram will 
 defend a flock from a dog. Beavers build their 
 homes in common, each family living in a lodge 
 with others close around it. Prairie-dogs, rats, 
 and other rodents live and work together, and 
 seals travel in large shoals and set sentinels 
 to watch for danger when they camp on islands 
 for the breeding season. 
 
 Among seals, however, family-life is more 
 important than devotion to the community, 
 and they are perhaps a strikiDg instance how, 
 among the higher vertebrate animals, the home- 
 
76 MORAL TEACHINGS OF SCIENCE 
 
 centre became the chief starting-point, family 
 affection having been much more strongly de- 
 veloped than in insects or other lower orders. 
 This may perhaps explain why in the human race 
 the social mechanism has not even yet reached 
 the perfection which we find in ant-communities. 
 For in man deeper and more complex motives 
 come into play, and the home-life has, as it were, 
 to be reckoned with and widened, before such 
 devotion to the community can arise, as is found 
 among the less sympathetic insects. 
 
 The courage with which the fur seal holds 
 his position as the head and guardian of a family 
 is said by the best authority, Mr. J. A. Allen, to 
 be of the very highest order ; he will defend his 
 wives to the death, and also the pups so long as 
 they remain on the spot he has chosen for the 
 home. But if they stray beyond this boundary, 
 neither he nor the mother seek them out, and it is 
 the bachelor seals, those who have failed to obtain 
 wives, who watch over the young pups and become 
 their "jealous and fearless protectors" in the 
 autumn when the fathers swim away. 1 Does not 
 this last fact show incidentally how the emotion 
 of affection once awakened craves to find satisfac- 
 
 1 Allen, North American Pinnipeds, p. 356. 
 
MORAL TEACHINGS OF SCIENCE 77 
 
 tion in animals as in man ? Do not the fatherless 
 seals, tending the deserted young ones, remind us 
 already of many unsatisfied human lives which 
 find their satisfaction in fulfilliog the loving duties 
 neglected by the more successful ? 
 
 And, indeed, among the more intelligent 
 animals we do find self-devotion in some of its 
 most touching forms. The buffaloes putting the 
 females and young in the centre of the herd and 
 defending them against attack ; the male baboon, 
 which came down from the mountain in the face 
 of the dogs to rescue a foolish young baboon 
 scarcely six months old which had remained 
 behind ; the elephants, who placed a badly 
 wounded tusker in their midst, and supporting 
 him between their shoulders, succeeded in secur- 
 ing his retreat to the forest ; nay, even the ele- 
 phant whose master rode him carelessly through 
 dead and dying natives in an epidemic, and who 
 yet carefully picked his steps among the people 
 so as not to injure them, such instances as these 
 are well worth recording, for it is a great error to 
 suppose that man is lowered by proofs that dumb 
 animals also show signs of nobleness of character. 
 
 On the contrary, bearing ever in our minds 
 that the laws of nature are the working out of the 
 
7 8 MORAL TEACHINGS OF SCIENCE 
 
 will and intention of the Great First Cause of all, 
 we find a surer foundation for our own higher 
 instincts when we see the manifold branches of 
 life spreading ever upward from their unconscious 
 root and opening out to greater and greater 
 possibilities. And surely, as we watch one by 
 one the nobler qualities developing, by the daily 
 experiences and efforts of beings in the ascending 
 scale of life during long ages, our hearts must 
 thrill with an emotion akin to that felt by 
 the patriarch Jacob, when awaking from his 
 dream he exclaimed, " Surely the Lord is in this 
 place, and I knew it not ! " 
 
 For we stand above even the most noble of 
 these lower animals in our power of reflecting on 
 the past, and thus foreseeing what may happen 
 in the future ; and still more in being able to 
 examine our own impulses and actions and to 
 compare them with laws governing the outer 
 world. It is this wonderful faculty, and not the 
 mere power of choice or free-will upon which 
 many lay so much stress, which raises us so far 
 above the dog or the baboon. These can and do 
 choose between different actions, and suffer when 
 they make mistakes ; but they lack, so far as we 
 can see, that se^-consciousness and mental power 
 
MORAL TEACHINGS OF SCIENCE 79 
 
 which enables us to look beyond the visible and 
 material phenomena to the invisible laws which 
 govern them. 
 
 And this it is which lays upon us so heavy 
 a responsibility ; that we can reflect upon 
 our own being, upon the consequences of our 
 actions, upon the problems of life, death, and 
 eternity. Surely then, having this faculty, it 
 behoves us to inquire very seriously how far our 
 actions are in accordance with those laws which 
 have been in force ever since the world began ; 
 and when we find that we are tending toward that 
 degradation which we have seen to be the 
 converse of the upward struggle, to mend our 
 ways and strive that ours may be the healthy, 
 vigorous rivalry which works good both to the 
 individual and to all. How far our present study 
 of the laws of life can guide us in this we must 
 next consider. 
 
CHAPTEE V 
 
 " A wise man will extend this lesson to all parts of life, and 
 know that it is the part of prudence to face every claimant and 
 pay every just demand on your time, your talents, or your heart. 
 Always pay ; for first or last you must pay your entire debt. 
 Persons and events may stand for a time between you and 
 justice, but it is only a postponement. You must pay at last 
 your own debt." EMERSON. 
 
 WE have now traced in a very general and 
 imperfect manner the working of the laws of 
 life in plants and animals. The outline is 
 necessarily very rude, both because it has been 
 given so briefly, and also from the imperfection 
 of our knowledge. Still we have established 
 some general truths which we now can apply to 
 the conduct of our own life. 
 
 The first of these, upon which all the rest 
 depend, is the invariability and steady unswerv- 
 ing action of the Will of the Author of all 
 things, as expressed in the laws of the universe. 
 This world is not one in which, by chance or by 
 
MORAL TEACHINGS OF SCIENCE 81 
 
 solicitation, we can escape the consequences of 
 our acts, or reap that which neither we nor our 
 ancestors have sown. In inorganic nature we 
 know that a flash of lightning travels according to 
 definite electrical and atmospheric laws, whether 
 it strikes the bare ground or a human being. The 
 earthquake occurs in accordance with the con- 
 ditions of the globe at a certain time and place, 
 whether it disturbs a desolate plain, or destroys a 
 populous city. In mechanical plant-life the weakly 
 seedling, or one falling on barren rock, is destroyed 
 by wind or weather, or stifled by other plants, 
 unless it possesses some faculty of adapting 
 itself and obtaining nourishment and support. 
 In the animal world the creature which, from 
 want of intelligence, from inheriting a weakly 
 nature, or from some other defect, fails to find 
 food and protect itself, will invariably be cut 
 off in the struggle for life. And in man, hard 
 though it may appear at first sight, the child who, 
 through faults of its ancestors, inherits disease 
 of body or mind, who, through bad training 
 and surroundings, develops vicious tendencies, or 
 through ignorance or want of judgment, loses 
 his way in life, must pay the full penalty of 
 weakness and mistakes. His only chance of 
 
82 MORAL TEACHINGS OF SCIENCE 
 
 escape is when, by the help of others or the 
 effort of some faculty in himself, he can adapt 
 himself to the conditions of life, as the trailing 
 plant lifts itself to the light up some friendly 
 wall, or the little black ant, taken captive by 
 a stronger race, conquers it by industry, and 
 becomes the true master of the nest in which 
 it was a slave. 
 
 And this brings us to the point so often made 
 an excuse for self-indulgence. If we are thus 
 held so firmly in the grip of inheritance and 
 training, how can we be responsible for our actions 
 and our upward or downward course ? The 
 answer which science gives leaves us no loophole 
 of excuse, nor does it oblige us to enter into the 
 vexed question of free-will, which is as hopeless 
 as the origin of life itself. 
 
 From the very beginning of animal life, we 
 see a power of " choice" developing together 
 with consciousness ; till, in insects, we see ants 
 even consult together and determine upon a line 
 of action, while in the vertebrata, to which we 
 ourselves belong, the governing power of ad- 
 justment in intelligent acts becomes still more 
 marked. Any one who has studied animals 
 must have observed that a dog will hesitate 
 
MORAL TEACHINGS OF SCIENCE 83 
 
 whether to follow his master, or stop to eat some 
 tempting morsel ; and the touching example 
 given by Mr. Lloyd Morgan 1 of his favourite 
 terrier, who turned to bite as his master sewed 
 up a painful wound, but checked himself before 
 the teeth closed tightly, and piteously licked 
 the hand instead, shows how self-restraint may 
 be exercised by animals. No doubt they will 
 decide according to their nature and training, 
 but decide they must, and they show that they 
 exercise the power of choice. In the same way a 
 drunkard who once excused himself to me, that 
 he must drink, for he had inherited the tendency, 
 could nevertheless not deny that the " choice " 
 lay with him to take or refuse the glass ; for, as I 
 pointed out, the very fact that he could recognise 
 the tendency, showed he had a faculty within to 
 resist it which he did, and became a sober man. 
 No doubt a keen discerner of character might 
 predict which way this man would act according 
 as he had a weak or strong will, and according to 
 the force of the circumstances surrounding him. 
 But the man himself cannot do so impartially, 
 because in the very act of predicting he would 
 be implicitly making a choice namely, that of 
 
 1 Animal Life and Intelligence, p. 340. 
 
84 MORAL TEACHINGS OF SCIENCE 
 
 continuing, or relinquishing as hopeless, the 
 effort to resist ; and it is effort of all kinds which 
 we see to have been of such paramount im- 
 portance in the history of the evolution of living 
 beings. 
 
 From the earliest beginnings of animal life 
 upwards we see gradually dawning this power 
 of choice, out of which responsibility springs. 
 The higher the creature, the more personal ex- 
 perience and choice take the place of fixed 
 mechanical instinct, till in ourselves the power 
 of reflecting upon the consequences of our actions, 
 and remembering how we have succeeded or failed 
 according to our decision, brings a sense of right 
 or wrong action, where, in mechanical instincts, we 
 see only fitness or unfitness to succeed. Thus, as 
 in obeying the laws of chemistry or of physics, 
 man subdues them to his purpose, so in obeying 
 the laws of life he succeeds in the struggle for 
 existence, and the power by which he does so, like 
 all power in the universe, emanates from God. 
 
 But now we find ourselves in the midst of a 
 new order of things. Through long ages this 
 power of intellect and moral purpose, strength- 
 ened and developed in the struggle of man with 
 man, and man with nature, has drawn us, on the 
 
MORAL TEACHINGS OF SCIENCE 85 
 
 one hand, nearer and nearer to the Great Power, 
 from whom we derive this higher life ; while, on 
 the other, it has become a fearful possibility for 
 evil. The plant which saps the life of another 
 performs a merely mechanical act ; the ant which 
 makes slaves follows a fixed instinct which it has 
 inherited, and has no consciousness of degradation. 
 The bird, whose instinct of self-preservation urges 
 her to migrate and neglect her young, forgets 
 them as soon as they are out of sight, and feels 
 no remorse. The animal which gratifies the 
 strong instinct developed through all nature for 
 the purpose of reproduction, never thinks of 
 the instinct again till the next occasion occurs. 
 But man, remembering in all these cases the 
 pleasure or the pain, the fitness or unfitness of 
 his action, and deliberately resolving to repeat 
 or to avoid the pleasurable sensation which is 
 unfitting to persevere in, or to neglect, the effort 
 which is fitting works out his own development 
 or degradation, and knows that he is doing so. 1 
 
 It is when we recognise this, and remember 
 how all the forms of happy, vigorous life have 
 sprung from the selection of those best fitted for 
 
 1 For a more complete exposition of these arguments see Darwin's 
 Descent of Man, chap, iv., in which the bearing of the struggle for 
 existence upon morality was first laid down. 
 
86 MORAL TEACHINGS OF SCIENCE 
 
 their existence, that we begin to ponder how far 
 we are fulfilling the conditions of our life, and to 
 value the lessons taught by the working of natural 
 law. These have shown us that the two great 
 necessities of self-preservation and reproduction 
 have led, on the one hand, to the effort of each 
 individual to succeed, and on the other to a 
 mother's care, extending gradually to that sym- 
 pathy and devotion to others which becomes in 
 ourselves a strong motive power, urging us to seek 
 the good of the whole living world. It is in the 
 balance of these two instincts the duty we owe 
 to ourselves, and the duty we owe to our neigh- 
 bour that the moral conduct of life consists. 
 
 Let us take the lower ground first and con- 
 sider how a man who thinks only of himself is 
 yet forced, if he wishes to succeed at all, to obey 
 to a certain extent the laws of right and wrong, 
 because they have their roots in the very founda- 
 tion of existence. Does he wish, for example, 
 to enjoy life ? then he must keep in bodily and 
 mental health. We see that if a plant is hurried 
 on too fast to flower and seed before it has 
 stored up strength, it grows weak and dies 
 early. So a young man who uses up his life 
 
MORAL TEACHINGS OF SCIENCE 87 
 
 too fast, either by dissipation, or by overwork 
 and privation, unfits himself for the struggle of 
 existence. But there is a difference in the two 
 cases : by work and self-denial he is preparing 
 for life and gaining on one side, even if he loses 
 on the other by want of judgment ; in dissipa- 
 tion it is all loss. Turning night into day for 
 pleasures which are only for the moment, burn- 
 ing away his strength with intoxicating drinks, 
 wasting his manhood by irregular passions, he 
 is inevitably incapacitating himself for a long 
 and happy life. Nay, even if he prefers a " short 
 life and a merry one," he is on the wrong road, 
 for he is reducing his power of enjoyment both 
 bodily and mental. Each excess lowers his 
 vitality, each immoral action debases his senses, 
 while it, nevertheless, creates a craving for that 
 which has ceased to be a pleasure, and he be- 
 comes less and less fit to survive in the struggle 
 for existence. 
 
 Such facts as these force themselves even 
 upon the most selfish ; but when a man's actions 
 are chiefly harmful to others, it is not always 
 so obvious how they recoil upon himself. Yet, 
 if we consider a moment, we must see that if 
 the self-regarding qualities of courage, strength, 
 
88 MORAL TEACHINGS OF SCIENCE 
 
 ability, power of endurance, industry, persever- 
 ance, determination, and self-control, are weapons 
 with which we fight the battle of life, so too are 
 the altruistic qualities of truthfulness, honesty, 
 justice, unselfishness, gentleness, and sympathy ; 
 for he who exercises these last invites and obtains 
 the respect and assistance of others, while he who 
 fails in them raises up antagonism, just as the un- 
 friendly visitors to flowers raise barriers against 
 themselves by the natural survival of those plants 
 which possess the best means of protection. 
 How a nature devoid of true sympathy and of 
 a sense of justice to others may succeed for a 
 time and then fail, is well exemplified in the 
 life of the first Napoleon. Without any of the 
 grosser vices he yet sacrificed first individuals, 
 then nations, to his ambition, until, having roused 
 the whole of the civilised world against him, 
 he, though probably a man of greater ability 
 than any of his contemporaries, was isolated like 
 a dangerous wild beast till his death. 
 
 Yet how few men realise the inevitable result 
 of injustice, of scant honesty, of untrustworthi- 
 ness, or even of a hard grasping nature which 
 lends no helping hand to others. We cannot 
 look around without recognising that among 
 
MORAL TEACHINGS OF SCIENCE 89 
 
 those who work there are many who think no 
 harm, for example, of exacting a full day's wage 
 and idling so as to do only half a day's work ; 
 of selling adulterated food so as to make a large 
 profit ; of scamping work done by the piece, and 
 passing by a flaw which may ruin the machine 
 of which it forms part. Again, turning to men 
 of property, how many, of otherwise upright 
 character and good social standing, will not 
 hesitate to start a speculation, in which they 
 themselves may gain much if it succeeds, and 
 lose little if it fails, which failure, however, would 
 involve the ruin of many ; or to take advantage 
 of the pressure of life to pay starvation wages ; 
 or of a large command of capital to create a 
 monopoly, by which thousands suffer, to increase 
 the wealth of one. So long as they keep within 
 the law, not a few men would laugh to scorn the 
 idea that they are not right in getting all they 
 can, and giving as little as they must. 
 
 True, the voice of religion has always been 
 lifted up against such actions. But how, if men 
 do not believe that the eye of a just God is over 
 them, or that it is forbidden to " grind the face 
 of the poor," or to take unjust advantage of 
 others ? The answer of science is that these 
 7 
 
90 MORAL TEACHINGS OF SCIENCE 
 
 commands of religion are not mere dogmas, 
 but literal statements of the truth. The keen 
 scrutiny of natural selection, the outcome of the 
 laws of the universe which are the will of God, 
 has never ceased to act since life began; and 
 imperfect and unfit work, whether in plant, 
 animal, or man, renders that being less fit in 
 the battle of life, ivhile unfair advantage and 
 hurtful actions toward the community create 
 opposition ivhich is a barrier to success. The 
 workman who slurs over his work, and the 
 man who over - reaches his neighbour, are 
 challenging the world to protect themselves 
 against fraud, just as much as the humble-bee, 
 gnawing the calyx of the Campion, challenges 
 that plant to protect itself by an inflated or 
 horny calyx (see p. 49) ; and the law of 
 Natural Selection will as surely cull out and 
 uphold the workshop in which honest work is 
 done, and the shop in which honest goods are 
 sold, as it does the healthy and the vigorous 
 in lower life. Nor is this all, for a country, in 
 which trustworthiness and honesty are losing 
 ground, will be at a disadvantage in the com- 
 petition with countries in which the moral 
 standard is higher ; and as the country suffers, 
 
MORAL TEACHINGS OF SCIENCE 91 
 
 every individual suffers with it in the long run. 
 Though "persons and events may stand for a 
 time between you and justice, it is only a post- 
 ponement. First or last you must pay your 
 entire debt." 
 
 In like manner, the master w r ho pays no heed 
 to justice between man and man in the treat- 
 ment of his work-people, or heaps up wealth 
 unjustly, becomes a parasite draining the life 
 of others without equitable return. He will ac- 
 cumulate wealth, but his own nature will surely 
 deteriorate, and not only his own nature but the 
 tone of the country in which he can so act and 
 yet be approved of his fellow-men. The antago- 
 nism here, the self-defence to which the struggle 
 for existence gives rise, will be the antagonism 
 of those who are ground down ; and in the bitter 
 war of labour against capital, of poverty against 
 vast wealth, the country and all in it suffer. 
 
 Have we not to some extent lost sight of this 
 truth in the present day ? In the rapid advance 
 of civilisation during the last hundred years, 
 have not the whirl of machinery, the spread of 
 commerce all over the globe, the opportunity of 
 making colossal fortunes, the herding together 
 of men in our great cities, and the absence of 
 
92 MORAL TEACHINGS OF SCIENCE 
 
 personal intercourse between those interested in 
 any great enterprise, led men to neglect the 
 human sympathy which ought to exist between 
 employer and employed ? Do we realise that even 
 from the point of view of an enlightened selfish- 
 ness it is to the interest of each to advance the 
 welfare of all ? Is not the habit growing upon 
 us of treating men as money -making machines 
 to be obtained at the least possible cost, forget- 
 ting that antagonism is always created when one 
 living being takes from another without render- 
 ing back in due proportion, whether in kind, in 
 gratitude, or in sympathy ? Do not strikes and 
 labour combinations, and our fierce social hatreds, 
 warn us that in political economy, as in the 
 science of life, the law of mutual help must work 
 side by side with that of personal gain ? 
 
 The question is no doubt a very difficult one, 
 the interests involved are so many and the results 
 produced so complicated, that even those who 
 seek honestly and have ample experience, are 
 often inclined in despair to give up the problem 
 as hopeless. But at least it is something gained 
 if we can establish from the laws of nature that 
 to grind down those who work for us to the bare 
 limits of subsistence, and to try to make the 
 
MORAL TEACHINGS OF SCIENCE 93 
 
 balance even by charity, is only to create antago- 
 nism on the one hand, and parasites on the other ; 
 while the masses will also do well to remember 
 that, even in plant-life, the store-accumulating 
 perennials are not without their value, as afford- 
 ing shelter and protection against rivals and 
 inclement seasons. 
 
 Meanwhile the spirit of " each one for 
 himself," which is being woven into the very 
 fibre of the present generation, is doing infinite 
 harm for the love of self, already made strong 
 enough by the battle for self-preservation, is 
 increased until the narrow circle of one small 
 life is all that each considers. Then it is that a 
 man, step by step, loses sight of all his true 
 relations to his fellow-beings, and either de- 
 teriorates into a mere lover of pleasure or gain, 
 or drifts into crime. Many of the worst, be- 
 cause most cold-blooded and heartless, crimes 
 of our day can be traced to this utter disregard 
 of anything but personal gratification or gain. 
 For when a man's own desires become the whole 
 end and aim of his life, he does not hesitate to 
 sacrifice others to them. Therefore, whether it 
 is money, or position, or sensual gratification he 
 seeks, the passion becomes stronger than all 
 
94 MORAL TEACHINGS OF SCIENCE 
 
 other considerations, and he is led on to self- 
 indulgence, deceit, and fraud, or even, when de- 
 tection becomes imminent, to carefully planned 
 murder to remove any difficulty from his path. 
 
 Such deliberate crimes, of which any one can 
 recall instances from our daily papers, do not 
 fortunately often occur, but they are startling 
 proofs how necessary it is that natures which 
 cannot be influenced by the higher law, which 
 we shall discuss in the next chapter, should at 
 least recognise that throughout all life a being 
 wholly selfish is at war with the entire world, 
 and must in some way or another suffer in the 
 end. No doubt many will exclaim at this 
 point that they themselves know selfish lives 
 which, while sacrificing others, seem to escape 
 all retribution or remorse ; and this is no doubt 
 true, for in many cases the " postponement " is 
 long. But if the law be true, this is only an 
 additional argument in favour of a point to be 
 urged by and by (p. 116), that in the end they 
 will have " to pay the whole debt." 
 
 Happily, however, this low motive of " self" 
 is not the foundation of morality, for were it 
 so, then, indeed, existence would be the cruel 
 heartless struggle that some would even now 
 
MORAL TEACHINGS OF SCIENCE 95 
 
 have us believe it to be, in which each would 
 coldly calculate how much service to others would 
 secure most benefit in return ; and in which all the 
 higher emotions of love, gratitude, self-devotion, 
 and sympathy would have no place, since to rise 
 upon the downfall of others would be the highest 
 ambition of all. 
 
 But this is not so. We have as yet touched 
 on only one, and that the lower side of the 
 question. We have been considering the argu- 
 ments which might influence such men as look 
 upon "right and wrong merely as matters of 
 expediency as to what will best serve their own 
 ends," and have shown that even on these 
 grounds they must be honest, trustworthy, just, 
 and to a certain extent regardful of others, lest, 
 having the laws of life against them, they should 
 be crushed under the more vigorous and healthy 
 natures. 
 
 For, as we shall see in the next chapter, the 
 care of our " other-selves " has, from the very 
 start of life, been educating living beings in 
 the higher altruistic qualities, without which 
 even the varied beauty of the plant world could 
 never have been developed; which, in animal life, 
 have gradually opened out the faculties more 
 
96 MORAL TEACHINGS OF SCIENCE 
 
 and more to unselfishness and self-devotion; 
 and which, in the ascending tide of human life, 
 have become to us a faint foreshadowing of In- 
 finite Love, Sympathy, and Fatherly Care. 
 
 It is the absence of this higher side which, 
 above all things, makes bad men or women, for 
 without it they are blind to the whole end and 
 object of our being, which consists in finding our 
 happiness in others, and all in God. And this 
 can be founded as firmly on science as on religion 
 (as, indeed, must be the case with all that is true), 
 for upon it rests the existence and continuance 
 of all races and species of beings from the 
 beginning of time. Without self-preservation 
 and the protection of the individual, life could 
 not exist ; without self-sacrifice and preservation 
 of the young, life could not continue ; and thus 
 the actual existence of a world of living beings 
 has its foundation in the service of others. It 
 is when we turn from the depressing atmosphere 
 of self to this higher instinct which seeks the 
 good of all, that we mount from earth to 
 heaven. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 " Duty ! "Wondrous thought, that workest neither by fond 
 insinuation, flattery, nor by any threat, but merely by holding 
 up thy naked law to the soul, and so extorting for thyself always 
 reverence, if not always obedience ; before whom all appetites 
 are dumb, however secretly they rebel ; whence thine original?" 
 KANT. 
 
 WE have seen in our last chapter that though 
 men who are utterly selfish may, and must from 
 self-interest, think of what is good for others, yet 
 this calculating altruism can never deserve the 
 name or assume the character of morality. We 
 feel at once that the man who refrains from 
 cheating his neighbour merely because " honesty 
 is the best policy " is not at heart an honest man ; 
 while he who performs a generous act, reckoning 
 all the while what he will gain in return, is not 
 unselfish. To be really moral, needs a higher 
 motive than this, a sense of duty, an enthusiasm 
 for that which is good and noble. Can the laws' 
 of nature then have developed in us this earnest 
 
98 MORAL TEACHINGS OF SCIENCE 
 
 sense of duty, which a true man dares not dis- 
 obey, even though it curb his strongest passions 
 and desires ? Not only is it possible, but the 
 whole scheme of the continuity of the universe 
 leads us to believe that this, too, is the outcome 
 of evolution, or the unfolding by natural law of 
 the will of the Creator, showing that the founda- 
 tions of morality were not laid merely in man, 
 " upon whom the ends of the world have come," 
 but in the very beginnings of life. 
 
 Even among plants it has been the necessity 
 of providing for a future generation which has 
 developed endless devices in the flower for 
 the fertilisation and protection of. its seeds; 
 while in the insect the mother devotes her whole 
 energies and risks her life to secure food and 
 safety for the offspring which she will never 
 see, taught by an instinct developed in the 
 struggle for existence by the survival of those 
 forms which best fulfilled these functions. 
 
 Is it wonderful then that, after long ages of 
 inheritance, this instinct should become so strong 
 as to impel even neuter bees and ants to perform 
 a mother's duties to those who are placed under 
 their care? And this work for others has no 
 root in self, in the strict sense, except in so far 
 
MORAL TEACHINGS OF SCIENCE 99 
 
 as the creature exercising it satisfies an instinct. 
 The butterfly or the sphex gains nothing herself 
 in providing laboriously for her young ; and 
 though, when we come to communities, the young 
 bees and ants do in time become useful in the 
 hive, yet it is clearly no calculation of this 
 kind which makes the workers nurse and tend 
 them, but an inner necessity stronger often than 
 the preservation of their own life. So too in 
 the higher animals this instinct, developed in 
 both father and mother and inherited by the 
 ancestors of man, acted but feebly at first in the 
 savage, who cared only for his own family or 
 tribe, but became strengthened, enlightened, and 
 purified by ever-developing intellect, by the con- 
 scious love and care of parents, by the memory 
 of sympathy given and received, and by the sur- 
 vival of those communities, races, and nations 
 in which fidelity, justice, obedience, and similar 
 virtues knit the members strongly together. 1 
 
 And thus it becomes evident that the stern 
 law of natural selection, though it often enables 
 the strong, the selfish, the hard, and the exacting 
 man to survive, just as it has produced the 
 grasping parasite, the prickly thorn, and the 
 
 1 See Descend of Man, chap. v. 
 
ioo MORAL TEACHINGS OF SCIENCE 
 
 bloodthirsty wolf; has also developed in far 
 greater proportion the loving, the tender, the 
 just, and the disinterested, as it has the mutual 
 attraction of insects and flowers, the industrious 
 law-abiding bee, and aided by man, himself a 
 product of the same laws has developed out of 
 the very wolf -tribe itself the faithful, devoted, 
 and affectionate dog. 
 
 The moral nature then within us is no sordid 
 balancing of debtor and creditor account between 
 ourselves and our neighbour, but the true voice 
 of the Creator, which has spoken from all time ; 
 saying first, "Parents love your children," and 
 then to members of a social community, " Thou 
 shalt love thy neighbour as thyself." And while 
 this command expressed in natural law has played 
 a large part in the production of all forms of 
 healthy life, so also by virtue of it have com- 
 munities existed. For mere self-interest, pursued 
 without regard to the rights of others must, as 
 we have seen, create antagonisms, and in the end 
 would ruin any nation or country which acted 
 upon that principle alone, or even one in which 
 it outweighed the principle of mutual help. 
 
 Nor is this merely a feeling or emotion gratify- 
 ing to the sentimentalist, for then it would be 
 
MORAL TEACHINGS Q& SCONCE 101 
 
 useless in the struggle for existence. .- li is really 
 the recognition of universal -life- as- one great 
 whole, of which we each as individuals form part, 
 so that we cannot injure ourselves or our neigh- 
 bour without, in so far, injuring all life, while 
 the self-denial or suffering we may incur to 
 benefit others enriches all, so long as it does not 
 actually injure or debase our own nature. 
 
 And now we are prepared to answer the 
 question how a man may hold his own in the 
 struggle for existence and yet sacrifice much for 
 the good of others ; and this not with a view to 
 ultimate gain to himself, but because duty prompts 
 and his higher nature responds gladly. Surely 
 by seeking to develop his own life in such a 
 manner as to produce the greatest good for every 
 living being. 
 
 The self-regarding virtues, such as self-reliance, 
 courage, prudence, industry, perseverance, and 
 temperance in all things, are essential to him ; 
 for we have seen that each individual must strive 
 to live and flourish, and make the most of any 
 opportunity to improve his own condition, and 
 that, in the struggle for existence, no effort can 
 be spared. Yet we feel instinctively that these 
 virtues are higher when we exercise them for 
 
102 
 
 &IORAL -TEACHINGS OF SCIENCE 
 
 . rgptffj <'6j others as well as for ourselves, and 
 teihper thehi ^ith tlie altruistic virtues of honesty, 
 fidelity, justice, sympathy, mercy, and benevo- 
 lence. We respect the resolute man who toils 
 day and night, who gives up his pleasure for work, 
 lives by rule, and sternly represses all excesses lest 
 they should hinder him in attaining success, and 
 when he has achieved it, we feel he has deserved 
 it. But we estimate far more highly the man 
 who exercises the same self-denial and persever- 
 ance for the sake of mother or sisters dependent 
 on him ; whose prolonged study has for its object 
 the discovery of some truth by which the suffer- 
 ings of his fellow-men may be mitigated and 
 their condition improved ; or who aims at being 
 the master of some great organisation not chiefly 
 for position and wealth, but because it gives him 
 power to study great social and commercial prob- 
 lems, and to put on a surer footing the relation 
 of man to man, class to class, and nation to 
 nation. And the reason we value such a man 
 more highly is because he aspires beyond the 
 narrow duty of self-preservation to the world- wide 
 purpose of good to all. 
 
 Though this purpose has been gradually 
 worked out through all life, yet we cannot 
 
MORAL TEACHINGS OF SCIENCE 103 
 
 call the lower animals moral or immoral, for 
 they "follow the law but know not the doc- 
 trine." Held fast, for the most part, in the 
 grip of blind instinct, they are examples of 
 mechanical duty; while, except in the higher 
 forms, they are probably never conscious of 
 more than passing sensations. But man, emerg- 
 ing into self -consciousness, remembering and 
 reflecting on past actions, and resolving upon 
 future conduct, has to choose deliberately be- 
 tween conflicting emotions and interests, and by 
 this conscious choice has a terrible power for 
 good or ill. Thus impulse and reason, the love 
 of self and the love of others, the gratification 
 of appetite and sense, and the restraining in- 
 fluence of higher faculties, contend within him 
 and make his inner life a struggle. As he can 
 rise infinitely above animals, when by reason 
 and judgment he acts in accordance with the 
 higher laws of his being, so he sinks deplorably 
 below them when yielding to gross and selfish 
 desires, he chooses the ways of vice and degra- 
 dation. 
 
 Which road he will take will depend chiefly 
 on two things on the cultivation of his intellect, 
 by which he discerns the sequence of cause, 
 
104 MORAL TEACHINGS OF SCIENCE 
 
 effect, and the consequences of his own actions 
 and those of others, and still more upon his 
 moral nature, his sense of oneness with mankind, 
 and with the whole of creation, which keeps him 
 in touch with his fellow-men, with the universe, 
 and with the Unseen Power which is breathing 
 within him the breath of life. The man who 
 has no sympathy, whose inordinate desires are 
 strong, and his social instincts weak, is essentially 
 a bad man ; yet another may also act with bad 
 results because, though his sympathy is strong, 
 it is guided by a weak intellect. 
 
 The cultivation of the intellect becomes, 
 therefore, a supreme duty, while the develop- 
 ment of love and sympathy is equally impera- 
 tive. By the cultivation of the first we recall 
 vividly the memory of past actions, and reflect 
 upon the consequences to w r hich they have 
 led ; by the exercise of the second we render 
 the memory of bad and selfish actions intoler- 
 able, and desire intensely to make reparation 
 as far as lies in our power. And this is con- 
 science, the voice of the law of God within 
 us, which speaks far more strongly than the 
 outer voice of the praise and blame of others. 
 For these only read our motives imperfectly, 
 
MORAL TEACHINGS OF SCIENCE 105 
 
 while we judge ourselves with the knowledge 
 of the thoughts hidden within us ; and this 
 judgment becomes keener the higher our in- 
 tellectual sensibility, and the deeper our 
 sympathy with our fellow- creatures. 
 
 Nor are we left without guidance even from 
 the outer world, for we have the history of past 
 ages spread out before us. Far from being 
 restricted to observations upon the life below 
 us, we can study the science of human life by 
 the light of natural law, and take example from 
 those higher types which, from time to time, 
 have risen above the level tide of man, and by 
 superior intellect and more abundant sympathy 
 have approached more nearly to the Source of 
 both. 
 
 " Lives of great men all remind us, 
 We may make our lives sublime." 
 
 And in all countries and climes, from Buddha 
 to Christ, and from the early Christian heroes to 
 those of our own day, we shall find that the 
 noblest natures, whether searching after truth 
 like Newton, withstanding wrong and oppression 
 like Abraham Lincoln, or going to almost certain 
 death like Gordon, in the hope of being of some 
 use to his "poor, ignorant, black children," have 
 
 8 
 
io6 MORAL TEACHINGS OF SCIENCE 
 
 all followed the law taught alike by science and 
 religion, that he who devotes his life to duty is 
 fulfilling the truest purpose of existence. 
 
 It is when we study the lives of such men as 
 these, that we notice how closely morality is 
 united to all true religion in whatever creed it 
 is expressed ; how in working for all we are 
 working with God ; and it is also then that the 
 problem of evil existing in the world presses 
 upon us most heavily. We have seen that this 
 problem cannot be solved with our present im- 
 perfect knowledge. Why suffering and degra- 
 dation should accompany the evolution of all 
 good and happy life must at present remain 
 a mystery to us. 
 
 The study of the struggle for existence 
 does to some extent lift the heavy cloud 
 hanging over us, by showing that all low 
 thoughts and actions relate to the narrow life 
 of self. They are the by-products of the effort 
 of every being to hold its own in this life ; and 
 we have seen how such effort lies at the root of 
 all progress, and of the very existence of varied 
 and vigorous beings. But we have also seen 
 that from the very beginning the love of our 
 " other-selves " has tempered this instinct of self- 
 
MORAL TEACHINGS OF SCIENCE 107 
 
 preservation, and since those, who in working 
 out their own life work for the good of all, 
 have been shown to be the fittest to survive, 
 it follows that, in an infinite and eternal scheme, 
 this higher mode of work must, in the long run, 
 prevail, and suffering and evil must be gradually 
 eliminated. Not, however, necessarily in this 
 life, where our bodily restrictions are so great 
 that the individual is always to a certain extent 
 at war with the whole, and where the time is 
 so short. If the full bearing of evolution is to 
 be worked out, it must be in a scheme which 
 embraces the entire universe. 
 
 This brings us face to face with the question 
 of immortality which is so profound and so diffi- 
 cult to deal with from the point of view of 
 science that the boldest mis;ht hesitate at 
 
 o 
 
 attempting it. My only excuse for doing so 
 is, that it is intimately connected with all 
 higher morality, and that, therefore, it is a 
 serious duty in those who believe they see a 
 vista in science through things temporal to 
 things eternal to state their convictions. 
 
 It appears to me that our intellect, our moral 
 nature, and the conclusions of science, even apart 
 
io8 MORAL TEACHINGS OF SCIENCE 
 
 from religious belief, all point to a continuation 
 of individual existence beyond the few short 
 years we pass in this world. Our intellect 
 carries us back through all phenomena to a 
 first cause which, because in Him all things 
 exist, cannot be other than omnipotent. It is 
 impossible, and a contradiction in thought, to 
 imagine that such a Power could be the author 
 of an imperfect or unjust scheme, such as this 
 world must be if those who, through inheritance 
 or evil surroundings, pass lives of suffering, dis- 
 ease, misery, and degradation here, should live 
 only their little span and pass away into nothing. 
 A perfect scheme must be p3rfect not only in 
 general results but in every minute detail, and 
 though the pain and suffering around us are 
 undeniable, and our limited experience makes 
 it difficult for us to understand how they can 
 have been necessary, yet as antagonism is im- 
 possible in an Omnipotent and Sole-existent 
 Power (see p. 25), the only really logical con- 
 clusion is that they must, in some way unseen 
 to us, be actually good not only for the universe 
 as a whole, but for each individual. 
 
 So far is "the argument of intellect and logic; 
 our moral nature speaks next. To a thoughtful 
 
MORAL TEACHINGS OF SCIENCE 109 
 
 mind it is not the longing for the prolongation 
 of our own existence which makes a future life 
 an imperative necessity, but a jealousy for the 
 honour of the eternal Being of whom we form 
 part a conviction that "man cannot be more 
 just than his Maker." Though selfishness and 
 callousness to the welfare of others may linger 
 in the lower strata of our nature, that which 
 relates only to our individual self; yet our 
 higher life, that which touches the universe, 
 is strong in the sense of justice, sympathy, and 
 mercy; and these qualities in ourselves, which 
 we know can come only from the Source of all 
 life, are an absolute proof that the Omnipotent 
 Power, by whose laws we exist, must possess 
 these qualities among His many inscrutable 
 attributes ; and that, since a just man would, 
 if he could, redeem those who, in the struggle 
 for life, have been too heavily weighted to rise, 
 there must be a compensatory power in the 
 universe which will, in the end, work out their 
 existence to a just conclusion. 
 
 For this consummation continued existence is 
 necessary beyond the present unevenly balanced 
 life, and the strongest arguments for it lie in 
 these conclusions of our intellect and moral 
 
I io MORAL TEACHINGS OF SCIENCE 
 
 nature. Yet science too lends her aid, if only 
 we will keep our minds fixed upon the truth 
 that throughout all phenomena it is the under- 
 lying invisible energy which is eternal, the form 
 which is temporary. 
 
 In the inorganic world we trace physical 
 energy in various forms producing all phenomena, 
 and in the organic world we find this same energy 
 utilised in every living being in the building up of 
 cells and tissue, and in the physical action of 
 nerve and muscle. Thus, physical energy may 
 be said to provide the necessary motive -power 
 for living beings, in the same sense that plants 
 provide the initial nourishment for the whole 
 animal world. Yet this does not prove that 
 animals have no higher existence than plants, 
 nor that living beings are mere manifestations 
 of physical energy. On the contrary, Professor 
 Stokes, who of all living men is perhaps most 
 competent to estimate what physical energy can 
 accomplish, says: "Admitting to the full as highly 
 probable, though not completely demonstrated, 
 the applicability to living beings of the laws 
 which have been ascertained with reference to 
 dead matter, I feel constrained at the same time 
 to admit the existence of a mysterious something 
 
MORAL TEACHINGS OF SCIENCE in 
 
 lying beyond, a something sui generis which I 
 regard, not as balancing and suspending the 
 ordinary physical laws, but working with them 
 and through them to the attainment of a desired 
 end." 1 
 
 This desired end, as far as we can see, is 
 individualisation transmitted by inheritance, and 
 if we once arrive at the conclusion that science 
 (as well as the common belief of mankind) recog- 
 nises something in living beings apart from, and 
 not convertible into, physical energy it matters 
 very little whether, in the past ages of evolution, 
 these two factors branched off from a common 
 source, as plants and animals branched off from 
 single living cells, or whether life has always 
 been a separate and higher emanation from 
 the First Cause. In either case this last has 
 been the guiding power in all living beings, the 
 cause and not the consequence of organisation ; 
 and organic growth, reproduction, sensation, per- 
 ception, self-consciousness, and volition, although 
 
 1 President's Address, British Association, Exeter, 1869. Professor 
 Oliver Lodge has expressed the same conclusion briefly and clearly in 
 his address this year to the Physical Section of the British Association : 
 "The relation of life to energy is not understood. Life is not energy, 
 and the death of an animal affects the amount of energy no whit ; yet 
 a live animal exerts control over energy which a dead man cannot. 
 Report in Nature, 20th August 1891. 
 
ii2 MORAL TEACHINGS OF SCIENCE 
 
 always accompanied by molecular changes, can 
 be conceived only as manifestations of life, just 
 as heat, electricity, and chemical affinity are 
 manifestations of energy. The mere dissolution 
 of the bodily frame can no more destroy one 
 than it does the other, while, however, there is 
 this great difference between them, that whereas 
 we know that the energy passes back in various 
 forms to the sum-total which remains constant 
 in the universe, the guiding control which we 
 call " life," with all those wondrous powers which 
 belong to it as the result of long ages of evolution, 
 cannot, so far as our experience goes, be trans- 
 formed, but passes out of the visible universe, 
 we know not whither. 
 
 It is true that those who do not believe in 
 continued existence after physical death argue 
 that we have no knowledge of conscious life 
 outside of that which we term matter. It is 
 possible they may be right, although, since 
 matter, energy, and life are all alike mysteries 
 to us, except through their manifestations, we 
 cannot, I think, dogmatise far in this direction. 
 But even if we allow their position, when can we 
 declare that life would be "outside matter" ? 
 Our only explanation of light reaching us 
 
MORAL TEACHINGS OF SCIENCE 113 
 
 from distant stars is founded upon undulations 
 of a supposed ether filling all space, and per- 
 meating all transparent objects upon our earth, 
 and yet absolutely invisible, imponderable, and 
 intangible to us, so that its existence has not 
 as yet been verified by any experiment. If we 
 need a hypothetical material pervading all the 
 visible universe to account for the transfer- 
 ence of physical energy which, we know, takes 
 place across space to and from our solar system, 
 why make a difficulty as to the possible passage 
 of life into the far beyond ? 
 
 This is, however, only a suggestion in answer 
 to an often-made objection, and carries us beyond 
 our point, which is that life, being the cause and 
 not the consequence of organisation, 1 does not de- 
 pend upon it for a continued existence ; and that, 
 since all those qualities and idiosyncrasies, which 
 constitute our inner self, are manifestations of 
 life, they cannot be affected in any way, heyond 
 mere outward expression, by the dissolution of 
 the bodily frame. Long before physiological 
 
 1 The German philosopher Wundt says : " The psychical life is not 
 the product of the bodily organism, but the bodily organism is rather 
 a psychical creation in all that, by its purposive power of self-regu- 
 lation, gives it precedence over inorganic bodies." Quoted by Dr. 
 Mivart, Truth, p. 426. 
 
U4 MORAL TEACHINGS OF SCIENCE 
 
 science had reached its present stage, Bishop 
 Butler, in his Analogy, emphasised this point ; 
 and one of our greatest living biologists, though 
 himself not hopeful of the future, pointed out 
 the argument to me, and acknowledged that it 
 
 O ' O 
 
 had never been refuted, and so far as he saw 
 never could be. 
 
 If we are constrained, then, to look upon 
 life as an ever active force working from the 
 lowest to the highest form and in itself inde- 
 structible, are all living existences to continue ? 
 This is another point upon which it is im- 
 possible for us to form a definite conclusion, 
 because even in this life individuality exists 
 in very various degrees. The individuality of 
 the plant is infinitely inferior in grade to the 
 individuality of the animal, just as the life of 
 the insect is not comparable to the self-conscious 
 life of man ; but as Bishop Butler again pointed 
 out, the continuation of all life is the only 
 logical conclusion, and the universe has surely 
 room and work for all grades of the living 
 principle. 
 
 Startling as this may appear at first sight 
 it becomes less so when we reflect that suffering 
 and struggle have existed from the beginning 
 
MORAL TEACHINGS OF SCIENCE 115 
 
 of life, so that in all sentient beings annihila- 
 tion would leave an unjust balance. The same 
 argument applies here which was used with 
 regard to our appreciation of the intelligence 
 of animals. Everywhere an increase of know- 
 ledge leads us to see continuous gradation 
 throughout all life, and to acknowledge that 
 we are only beginning faintly to comprehend 
 the possibilities of nature. 
 
 But while this consideration must lead us to 
 a much deeper sense of our duty towards animals 
 than is commonly felt, it does not seriously affect 
 our estimate of that individual responsibility in 
 the case of human beings, which concerns us 
 in dealing with the question of morality. It is 
 the continuity of the life of each individual 
 man, with its qualities and idiosyncrasies, 
 which becomes of such vast importance if the 
 arguments urged above are sound. For, as in 
 this life, the vast superiority of man in his 
 power of abstract thought, spiritual apprehension, 
 and moral resolve, makes him the arbiter of his 
 own success or failure, so his power of anticipa- 
 tion of a future life gives a new and overwhelm- 
 ing impetus to his moral nature. On the side 
 of self-preservation alone it warns him that the 
 
u6 MORAL TEACHINGS OF SCIENCE 
 
 consequences of his actions are far-reaching, and 
 that the penalty which he seems to escape here 
 is " only a postponement. First or last he must 
 pay the whole debt." 
 
 And here we have the answer to those 
 who urge that an enlightened selfishness may 
 enable a man to further his own ambition and 
 indulge his vices at the expense of others, and 
 yet escape unpleasant consequences himself and 
 enjoy life to the end. He may, indeed, do 
 this when a less astute egotist would bring a 
 speedy retribution on his head; but none the 
 less he is storing up in his nature elements 
 antagonistic to the good of all, and as such 
 elements are least fitted to survive in an ever- 
 progressing evolution, sooner or later the con- 
 sequences must react upon him the narrow self 
 at war with higher life must be crushed out. 
 
 On the other hand, what an impetus is here 
 given towards a higher and nobler life for our- 
 selves, and self-sacrifice for others I If we are 
 willing to labour and spend ourselves to mitigate 
 the sufferings and better the condition of our 
 fellow-beings for a few short years, how much 
 more then, if we feel that the wretched state of 
 their existence is dragging down the life which 
 
MORAL TEACHINGS OF SCIENCE 117 
 
 should be progressing, and learning all that 
 can be learned here, before passing into a wider 
 sphere. 
 
 For in this as in all else we cannot escape 
 from continuity. That which the individual life 
 has gained or lost in the struggle here must 
 characterise it in its onward path till a wider 
 experience and emulation has developed the 
 nobler and stifled the narrower and lower 
 instincts. 
 
 Using the faculties he inherits, and working 
 out his inner self by the experience he derives 
 from the conditions under which he lives, man 
 is moulded on this earth for good or for evil. 
 It is no doubt depressing to contemplate how 
 many leave it degraded by lives of self-indulg- 
 ence or grinding misery. Yet none, not even 
 the grossest sensualist, or the most hardened 
 criminal, was ever without some spark of higher 
 life, some love for a little child, some generous 
 feeling towards those who have not cast him out 
 in his degradation. 
 
 And when we carry on the life-principle into 
 the boundless universe, and remember that the 
 slightest spark of good must survive since it is 
 of value to all, while, as we have seen, evil must 
 
n8 MORAL TEACHINGS OF SCIENCE 
 
 be eliminated as injurious to all, then the pes- 
 simism induced by contemplating the ills of this 
 life, is replaced by a patient optimism. For 
 hope goes on before us, justifying the highest 
 promises of religion in all ages, and we can 
 dimly foresee how, through the action of ever- 
 widening sympathy, the narrow boundary of 
 self will break down more and more till our own 
 individuality will survive only to be merged by 
 sympathy in that of others. When that time 
 comes, as surely it must, we shall realise at last 
 that we are indeed but individual fractions of 
 One Universal Life. 
 
INDEX 
 
 ADAMS, Professor, cited, 9. 
 Allen, Mr. J. A., on seals, 76. 
 Altruism, origin of, 95, 98. 
 Altmistic virtues, 102. 
 Animals, purpose shown by low, 
 
 55. 
 Annuals, analogy of, with man, 
 
 38. 
 Antagonism in plants, 49 ; aroused 
 
 in man by injustice, 89-92. 
 Ants, protecting thorn-tree, 46 ; 
 
 giving warning, 60 ; devotion 
 
 of neuter, 64 ; wars among, 68. 
 Asa Gray cited, 37. 
 
 BABOON saving young one, 76. 
 Balanophores, parasites, 43. 
 Ball, Sir R., on gravitation, 11. 
 Bees, and plants, 48 ; devotion of 
 
 working, 64 ; solitary, 65. 
 Beetles assisting each other, 60. 
 Belt, Mr., on ants, 46. 
 Biennials, analogy of, with man, 
 
 39. 
 Birds, familiar affection among, 
 
 70 ; carrying wounded friend, 71. 
 Bromelias protected by cup of dew, 
 
 50. 
 
 Broomrape, a parasite, 42. 
 Buddha, example of, 105. 
 Buffaloes shielding the young, 76. 
 Bull's - horn Thorn harbouring 
 
 ants, 46. 
 Butler, Bishop, on immortality, 
 
 113. 
 
 CAPRICE, absence of, in the uni- 
 verse, 13. 
 
 Caterpillar communities, 60. 
 
 Choice exercised by animals, 82 ; 
 by man, 83. 
 
 Christ, example of, 105. 
 
 Cockchafer mother, 62. 
 
 Cockroach assisting young, 63. 
 
 Colonies, scepticism in the, 4. 
 
 Communities of florets, 52 ; of in- 
 sects, 60, 64. 
 
 Compensation, an argument for 
 immortality, 108. 
 
 Conduct, selfish reasons for good, 
 87. 
 
 Conscience, growth of, 104. 
 
 Copernican theory, moral effect of 
 the, 8. 
 
 Creation and evolution, 19. 
 
 Crime following selfishness, 93. 
 
 Cross-fertilisation and evolution, 
 37. 
 
 Cuvier on extinct animals, 19. 
 
 DARWIN, his theory of Natural 
 Selection, 21, 23 ; on seeds in 
 clot of earth, 35 ; his theory of 
 morals, 85, 99. 
 
 Death not an evil, 51. 
 
 Descent of Man cited, 85, 99. 
 
 Devotion, among insects, 62-66, 68; 
 among birds, 72 ; among verte- 
 brates, 76 ; in man, 101, 105. 
 
 Disease caused by parasites, 41, 51. 
 
 Dodder, a parasite, 41, 43. 
 
I2O 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Dog, self-restraint in, 83 ; sense of 
 
 shame in, 74 ; developed from 
 
 wolf tribe, 100. 
 Dragon-fly grubs, 62. 
 Drones killed by working bees, 67. 
 Drunkard exercising self-restraint, 
 
 83. 
 Duty, among ants, 56 ; Kant on, 
 
 97. 
 
 EARTH, its place in universe, 10. 
 
 Earwig mother, 56, 63. 
 
 Education of young, 74. 
 
 Edward, T., on wounded tern, 72. 
 
 Effort all-important in life, 35. 
 
 Elephants protecting wounded 
 comrade, 77 ; humanity shown 
 by, 77. 
 
 Emerson, passage on compensa- 
 tion, 79. 
 
 Emotion in animals, 56. 
 
 Energy, forms of, 11 ; and life 
 compared, 112. 
 
 Ether, invisible, necessary for 
 theory of light, 112. 
 
 Evil, theories of, 24 ; examples 
 of, in plant-life, 34 ; necessary 
 elimination of, 117. 
 
 Evolution of visible universe, 13 ; 
 man a product of, 29 ; of mo- 
 rality, 95. 
 
 FATHERLY care, absent below ver- 
 tebrates, 66 ; among fish, 69 ; 
 among frogs, 69 ; among mam- 
 malia, 73. 
 
 First Cause, revealed in nature, 
 15 ; omnipotence of, 25 ; source 
 of all phenomena, 30 ; a perfect 
 scheme must arise from, 108. 
 
 Flower, Tennyson's poem on the, 
 33. 
 
 Flower-heads with sterile outer 
 florets, 52. 
 
 Forel, Professor, on ants, 64. 
 
 Free-will, or choice, 56, 78. 
 
 Fungi, useful, 40 ; injurious, 41. 
 
 GALILEO, discoveries of, 8. 
 God revealed in nature, 15. 
 
 Good, survival of, throughout 
 
 eternity, 117. 
 Gordon, example of, 105. 
 Greek solution of the problem of 
 
 evil, 24. 
 Green, Prof. T. H., on Deity, 25. 
 
 H ALLEY on motion of stars, 9. 
 Herschel, Sir W., on sun's motion, 
 
 9 ; on binary stars, 10. 
 Huber, M., on reason in animals, 
 
 55 ; cited, 64. 
 
 ICHNEUMON fly attacking cater- 
 pillar, 59. 
 
 Immortality, arguments for, 107- 
 114. 
 
 Indecision and choice in animals, 
 84. 
 
 Individuality difficult to define, 
 114. 
 
 Inheritance, consequences of, 81. 
 
 Insects, as food for plants, 50 ; 
 dawn of faculties in, 56 ; para- 
 sites among, 58 ; self -defence 
 among, 59 ; help among, 60 ; 
 motherly care among, 62-64. 
 
 JACOB'S dream, 77. 
 
 Jews, their theory of evil, 24. 
 
 KEPLER, laws established by, 8. 
 Kerner on imprisoned insects, 49. 
 Kinship of all life, 31. 
 
 LAMARCK, theory of, 20. 
 Laplace on solar system, 9. 
 Leverricr cited, 9, 22. 
 Life, individuals are fragments of 
 
 one universal, 118 ; laws of, in 
 
 plants, 34. 
 
 Lincoln, Abraham, 105. 
 Lives, value of unsuccessful, 27. 
 Lodge, Prof. 0., on life controlling 
 
 energy, 111. 
 
 Lubbock, Sir J., cited, 37. 
 Lychnis catching insects, 49. 
 
 M c CooK on ants, 64. 
 
INDEX 
 
 121 
 
 Males among insects, functions of, 
 66. 
 
 Man, not the originator of suffer- 
 ing, 21 ; his relationship to ani- 
 mals, 29 ; parasites among, 41, 
 58 ; responsibility in, 85 ; springs 
 of moral conduct in, 104. 
 
 Migrating instinct versus maternal, 
 73. 
 
 Mildews and moulds, 41. 
 
 Milton, quotation from, 1. 
 
 Mivart, Dr., cited, 113. 
 
 Moral arguments as to immortality, 
 109. 
 
 Morals, scientific view of, 5 ; foun- 
 dation of, 31. 
 
 Morgan, Mr. Lloyd, and his dog, 
 83. 
 
 Mother's care the root of altruism, 
 61, 98. 
 
 Miiller, Professor, cited, 37. 
 
 NAPOLEON I., cause of his fall, 88. 
 
 Natural Selection, 22 ; not neces- 
 sarily cruel, 24, 32 ; fulfilling a 
 noble purpose, 27 ; shown in 
 human life, 89 ; developing 
 kindly instincts, 99. 
 
 Newton cited, 8, 22, 105. 
 
 ODOURS, offensive and defensive, 
 
 in plants, 44. 
 
 Optimism of Natural Selection, 117. 
 Other-selves, love and care for our, 
 
 61, 98, 106. 
 
 PALEONTOLOGY and evolution, 19. 
 Parasites, among plants, 41 ; among 
 men, 41, 58 ; among insects, 58. 
 Path-finders in plants, 44. 
 Patmore, Coventry, quotation from, 
 
 Perennials, analogy of, with man, 
 39, 92. 
 
 Persian theory of evil, 24. 
 
 Pitcher-plants and insects, 50. 
 
 Plants, laws of life in, 34 et seq. ; 
 self-defence in, 43, 49 ; and in- 
 sects, 44-49 ; composite, 52 ; 
 help and defence among, 53. 
 
 9 
 
 Pope, quotation from, 18. 
 Ptolemaic theory, 8. 
 
 RAFFLESIA, a parasite, 43. 
 
 Reason, dawn of, in animals, 56. 
 
 Reptiles, mother's care among, 69. 
 
 Responsibility following on self- 
 consciousness, 85 ; causing inner 
 struggle, 103. 
 
 Retribution inevitable, 80, 94, 115. 
 
 Robber-bees, 56, 67. 
 
 Rook communities, 71. 
 
 SCHEME of universe must be per- 
 fect, 108. 
 
 Science, results, 7, 11 ; voice of, 
 on selfishness, 89 ; arguments of 
 as regards immortality, 109-113. 
 
 Seals, family life of, 75 ; bachelor, 
 76. 
 
 Self -consciousness and responsi- 
 bility, 78, 103. 
 
 Self-indulgence not excusable, 82. 
 
 Self not foundation of morality, 
 94, 99. 
 
 Self-regarding virtues, 101. 
 
 Self-restraint in dog and in man, 
 83. 
 
 Selfishness among insects, 67 ; in 
 man, 91. 
 
 Shelley, quotation from, 55. 
 
 Slavery among ants, 68. 
 
 Social communities among birds, 
 71 ; among vertebrates, 74-77. 
 
 Socrates on death, 51. 
 
 Spectrum analysis, bearing of, on 
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 13. 
 
 Spencer, Herbert, on First Cause, 
 14. 
 
 Sphex, maternal instincts of, 62. 
 
 Spider protecting young, 63. 
 
 Stokes, Professor, on life, 111. 
 
 Struggle for existence a partial 
 solution of suffering, 26, 106. 
 
 Stylops, a stunted parasite, 58. 
 
 Suffering, existed before man, 21 ; 
 theories to account for, 24 ; pur- 
 pose of, in nature, 27, 106. 
 
 Sun, a travelling star, 10. 
 
122 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Sundew catching insects, 50. 
 Survival of the Fittest, 22. 
 
 TENNYSON, quotation from, 33. 
 Terns carrying wounded com- 
 panion, 71. 
 Tycho Brahe, observations of, 8. 
 
 UNFAIR advantage creates antago- 
 nism, 49, 89. 
 Uniformity of Action, 12. 
 
 Universe, no caprice in the kws 
 of the, 13. 
 
 VERTEBRATES, father's care among, 
 69. 
 
 WALLACE, Mr. W. R., on Natural 
 
 Selection, 21. 
 Wars among ants, 68. 
 Wasps, males die in winter, 67. 
 Wundt, Professor, on psychical life. 
 
 113. 
 
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 mind the great lessons which these impressive elevations are capable of imparting to 
 men. . . . Mr. Ward's sympathy with his subject is keen and alive. He writes as 
 one who loves Nature profoundly. The faith and devotion of such students we are 
 assured that she never betrays. His in truth is a volume to carry along with one to 
 the mountain and to open and read anywhere. It is also a volume to read at home. 
 Even those who have not in years looked upon those glorious pageants of mountain- 
 tops and moving clouds will find it of great interest and of much practical service in re- 
 calling their early impressions and suggesting new ones." New York Times. 
 
 " The author of ' The White Mountains ' is a mountain enthusiast possessing keen 
 poetic conception, the hardihood of a mountaineer, and the especial knowledge of a 
 mountain guide. He, therefore, thoroughly covers his chosen field. Little or nothing 
 is left to any future gleaner ; for he has studied this region in all its summer moods and 
 winter tenses, from North Conway to the retreat to Lonesome Lake, from the great 
 wall of the Glen to the heart of the wilderness, from little Jackson Valley to wild- 
 wooded Moosilauke, and the interest of the author is soon communicated to the reader, 
 so that he feels, if he has once visited this region, that he must go again with this book 
 in his hand, to look with wider eyes and finer intelligence, to dream with poets and 
 think with sages." The New York Home Journal. 
 
 " The volume, although it covers familiar ground, is unique in its plan and treat- 
 ment, and opens up a new and wonderful source of enjoyment to the lover of natural 
 scenery. It humanizes Nature, or, rather, it brings the single individual soul into 
 communion with that vast and universal soul which pervades the material universe." 
 Boston Transcript. 
 
 " Description of the perpetually changing mountain view (assisted by ten good 
 photogravures), and interpretation of it after the manner of the poet and the believer 
 in the Divine Immanence, are the two offices which Mr. Ward has so successfully dis- 
 charged that his volume will become a classic on the White Mountains. Literary 
 World. 
 
 " It furnishes a great deal of practical information which will be of inestimable 
 service." Boston Gazette. 
 
 "The book is replete with noble thoughts expressed in language of exquisite 
 beauty." New York Observer. 
 
 " The author is thoroughly in love with his subject and not less thoroughly acquaint- 
 ed with it. " New York Tribune. 
 
 New York : D. APPLETON & CO., i, 3, & 5 Bond Street. 
 
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 which they were left at school, by our wretched system of teaching by the book only, 
 will thank Mr. Serviss for the suggestions he has so well carried out." New York 
 Times. 
 
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 Chicago Herald. 
 
 " 'Astronomy with an Opera-Glass' fills a long-felt want." Albany Journal. 
 
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 public star-gazing the fault is not his, for his style is as winning, as graphic, and as 
 clear as the delightful type in which it is printed." Providence Journal. 
 
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 complexity and range of his themes, but unites simplicity with scholarship, scientific 
 precision with life-long enthusiasm, and a genuine eloquence with rare touches of hu- 
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