XII
The Omnipresent Ethical Trend
With the evolution of true maternity Nature was ready to proceed to her highest grades of work. Intelligence was next to be lifted to higher levels, and the order of mammals with greatest prehensile capacities, the primates with their incipient hands, were the most favourable subjects in which to carry on this process. The later stages of the marvellous story we have already passed in review. We have seen the accumulating intelligence lengthen the period of infancy, and thus prolong the relations of loving sympathy between mother and child; we have seen the human family and human society thus brought into existence; and along therewith we have recognized the necessity laid upon each individual for conforming his conduct to a standard external to himself. At this point, without encountering any breach of continuity in the cosmic process, we crossed the threshold of the ethical world, and entered a region where civilization, or the gradual perfecting of the spiritual qualities, is henceforth Nature's paramount aim. To penetrate further into this region would be to follow the progress of civilization, while the primitive canoe develops into the Cunard steamship, the hieroglyphic battle-sketch into epics and dramas, sun-catcher myths into the Newtonian astronomy, wandering tribes into mighty nations, the ethics of the clan into the moral law for all men. The story shows us Man becoming more and more clearly the image of God, exercising creative attributes, transforming his physical environment, incarnating his thoughts in visible and tangible shapes all over the world, and extorting from the abysses of space the secrets of vanished ages. From lowly beginnings, without breach of continuity, and through the cumulative action of minute and inconspicuous causes, the resistless momentum of cosmic events has tended toward such kind of consummation; and part and parcel of the whole process, inseparably wrapped up with every other part, has been the evolution of the sentiments which tend to subordinate mere egoism to unselfish and moral ends.
A narrow or partial survey might fail to make clear the solidarity of the cosmic process. But the history of creation, when broadly and patiently considered, brings home to us with fresh emphasis the profound truth of what Emerson once said, that "the lesson of life ... is to believe what the years and the centuries say against the hours; to resist the usurpation of particulars; to penetrate to their catholic sense." When we have learned this lesson, our misgivings vanish, and we breathe a clear atmosphere of faith. Though in many ways God's work is above our comprehension, yet those parts of the world's story that we can decipher well warrant the belief that while in Nature there may be divine irony, there can be no such thing as wanton mockery, for profoundly underlying the surface entanglement of her actions we may discern the omnipresent ethical trend. The moral sentiments, the moral law, devotion to unselfish ends, disinterested love, nobility of soul,—these are Nature's most highly wrought products, latest in coming to maturity; they are the consummation, toward which all earlier prophecy has pointed. We are right, then, in greeting the rejuvenescent summer with devout faith and hope. Below the surface din and clashing of the struggle for life we hear the undertone of the deep ethical purpose, as it rolls in solemn music through the ages, its volume swelled by every victory, great or small, of right over wrong, till in the fulness of time, in God's own time, it shall burst forth in the triumphant chorus of Humanity purified and redeemed.
THE EVERLASTING REALITY OF RELIGION
Here sits he shaping wings to fly;
His heart forebodes a mystery:
He names the name Eternity.
That type of Perfect in his mind
In Nature can he nowhere find,
He sows himself on every wind.
He seems to hear a Heavenly Friend,
And through thick veils to apprehend
A labour working to an end.