ence of this theory, the idea of the perfectibility of the human race has struck deep roots in our consciousness. The conception of an evolution of society directed by humanity itself through conscious and intentional selection of means toward an end, has ceased to be a Utopian dream, and has the sanction of science. There is less assertion, more modesty in affirmation, less arrogance in judgment, more humility before the facts of life, less satisfaction with the things that have been attained, more eagerness of search for the truth and endeavor for high things. If we seem to know less about realms once familiarly mapped out, we have gained something in a more accurate knowledge of the processes of Nature, and even more in acquiring a method of approach to every subject that promises larger returns.

The cause of true religion has gained. For in the new valuation of all things imposed upon us by science, we have found, not only what services religion has historically rendered, but also what elements it must retain and what elements it must drop, if it is to remain an indispensable force in the life of the race. There must be the love of truth, which has built up all the creeds; the feeling of intimate relationship to the life of the universe, which is the soul of all mysticism; the sense of beauty in Nature and art, which has sought expression in the cult; and the desire for harmony with the highest ideal of perfection. The excrescences, the aberrations, the lack of balance must be avoided. Then religion shall be the integrating force in our existence as individuals and as a race, by which the higher shall take its natural place in genetic connection with the lower, and the lower hold its position of glorious promise and potentiality. [Applause.]

THE PRESIDENT.-Chicago's loss is Boston's gain. For many years Mr. Salter has spent all his working months in Chicago. He goes there still, I think, every year, to lecture in the university; but much of the time now he is with us here in Boston and Cambridge, and that enables him to be with us at the meetings of the Free Religious Association oftener than heretofore. He was, as many of you remember with pleasure, one of our lecturers at last year's spring course of lectures; and he is here with us to-day. I am happy to present him, to speak especially upon the Influence of the Doctrine of Evolution upon Ethics, - Mr. William M. Salter. [Applause.]

ADDRESS BY MR. WILLIAM M. SALTER, OF CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS.

THE INFLUENCE OF DARWIN'S THEORY ON ETHICS.

What is the influence of Darwin's theory on ethics? According to some it is revolutionary. It is the sentiments and practices growing out of the sympathetic instincts that are particularly in mind. It is claimed that they go counter to the law of evolution - that the less fit are thereby made to survive.

Darwin himself remarks that while among savages the weak in body or mind are soon eliminated, we civilized men do our utmost to check the process of elimination — building asylums for the imbecile, the maimed, the sick, instituting poor-laws, our medical men doing their utmost to save the life of every one to the last moment, vaccination probably preserving thousands who from a weak constitution would formerly have succumbed to small-pox. Thus the weaker members of society propagate their kind. No one, Darwin says, who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man. Accordingly there are those who draw the conclusion that philanthropy, charity (i. e., the attempts of the stronger to help the weaker) are a

mistake. Some simply condemn public charity; others private charity as well. Perhaps if the logic were thorough-going, justice also would be condemned, i. e., when exercised toward those not strong enough to get it for themselves. It may be held that people not vigorous enough to assert their rights and to make them respected are inferior members of the species, hardly entitled to consideration. Lowell spoke of the possible "effect of Darwinism as a disintegrant of humanitarianism." Dr. Maudsley asks, "Are not people, with their incontinent compassions, their benevolent aspirations and their socialistic longings, making too much account of the individual?" Professor Sumner, of Yale, who says, "every man and woman in society has one big duty," namely, "to take care of his or her self," questions whether the policeman should pick a drunkard out of the gutter. A writer in Nature tells us that "the question of degeneration under sanitary influences is well worthy of attention and investigation." In accordance with such suggestions one might think twice before favoring such preventive measures as modern municipalities are apt to take when a visitation of the cholera or other plague is dreaded, for at the worst it would be the relatively less sound and less healthy constitutions that would be carried off by the disease not to mention the fact that those most successful in the struggle for existence, "the rich, the comfortable, prosperous, virtuous, respectable," as Professor Sumner calls them, would probably be able to take themselves off betimes out of harm's way.

Unquestionably, if Darwinism meant all this, its influence would be revolutionary for the ethics we have is largely a Jewish and Christian product, is based on the idea of the sacredness of human life as such; and the new views would undermine it.

But there is another class of facts, brought to light or rather recognized by Darwin, which gives a different perspective. Dr. C. C. Everett once pointed this out. ("Poetry, Comedy, and Duty," pp. 283-4). How explain the sterile workers - the unfruitful females among the bees? Darwin was once led to ask. Obviously sterility cannot be hereditary;

even a tendency to sterility in any class of individuals must be against their success in the struggle for existence. How then, on principles of natural selection, could the strange phenomenon in the bee-community be accounted for? At first puzzled, the great naturalist came to see that explanation was only possible by taking a new standpoint, by shifting from an individual to a collective point of view, by considering the community as itself a whole. Long before, Schopenhauer had advanced the idea that a bee-community develops classes of members for special functions, as a body does special organs. A community is in a sense itself an individual, it has a certain variability or plasticity, and the variations arising in it that are favorable to its success and perpetuation tend to be seized upon and handed down by natural selection, just as similar variations in any ordinary individual are. If then on the principle of a division of labor a class of sterile workers (i. e., of those who work to the exclusion of anything else) would be an advantage to the bees, a community developing them would be favored by natural selection over others that did not — it would survive and the others tend to extinction. And so the phenomenon, so unaccountable from the individual standpoint, becomes intelligible collectively.

Now this point of view has an important bearing on ethics. If we men were individuals simply, each struggling to live against the others, it may be admitted that sympathy and the exercise of the sympathetic instincts would be no advantage to us, but rather a hindrance natural selection would be against it; the race would go to the swift and strong alone. But as matter of fact we are, and practically have always been, members of larger wholes and accordingly that which binds men together in wholes has an altogether peculiar significance.

It is hardly too much to say in the light of Darwin's investigations that some measure of the sympathetic instincts is not only an advantage to a community in the struggle for existence, but is a condition of the community's existence. Animals themselves and even insects are sometimes social in their nature and aid one another in important ways. They warn one another of danger; they render one another homely

little services as when cows lick each other on a spot that itches; they defend the weaker members of their group-as when on our western plains the bull-bisons in time of danger drive the cows and calves into the middle of the herd, whilst they defend the outside. Every reader of Darwin's famous chapters bearing on this subject in the "Descent of Man," will remember the instance he gives of the brave baboon, who like a "true hero" came down among his dreaded human foes to rescue a young one of his troop. Here too we read of the Indian crows who fed two others of their companions who were blind, and of baboons in confinement who tried to protect one of their number when he was about to be punished by his keepers. Such instances may be rare, but who does not see that the sympathetic instincts revealed in these striking examples are, in their ordinary exercise, the means by which a company of animals are held together and made strong, as against their enemies and whatever obstacles may be in their way? If the bull-bisons did not protect the cows and calves, that is, help those who had not sufficient strength to defend themselves, what would in time become of the herd? It is evident that as between a herd or tribe with sympathetic instincts and one in which each member cared for itself alone, natural selection would favor the preservation of the former and the extinction of the latter. As Darwin himself puts it, "the individuals who took the greatest pleasure in society would best escape various dangers; whilst those that cared least for their comrades, and lived solitary, would perish in greater numbers." Or again, "those communities which included the greatest number of the most sympathetic members would flourish most, and rear the greatest number of offspring."

Apparently then there is a place for the sympathetic instincts in the world — even in the animal world; and according to Darwin himself. In fact, had the rule always been acted on which the so-called new ethics is proposing, the rule which would say, let the strong and capable care for themselves and not interfere to prevent the weak from suffering the natural effect of their weakness, it is doubtful if the race of man would ever have arisen yes, it is doubtful if more than a