Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 53.djvu/780

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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

in this great order of creation must find in the revelation of that reason and will by which he is differentiated from all other animals an emanation or inspiration from that higher power which makes for righteousness:

"High over space and time it rides,
The high thought that can never alter."

Again, we find in the Hebrew myth the origin of the knowledge of good and evil which has been so fearfully misconstrued in the Christian dogma as the fall of man, the first recorded conception of the development of that mental energy by which mankind became differentiated from all other animals. We also find in the true rendering of the Greek text of the central precept of Christianity—in which, as I am assured by scholars, the word "agapao" is more correctly construed in English in the word "service," "Thou shalt serve thy neighbor as thyself"—the very principle of modern commerce by which it lives and moves and has its being, evolving mutuality of benefits through the exchange of products. This concept can be traced far back in Leviticus, in the writings of Confucius, and in the records of the Egyptians.

1 therefore venture to submit to the members of this association the suggestion that true as may be the theory of evolution as it now stands, it is not yet complete. It will remain inadequate until some philosophic observer yet greater than Darwin traces and defines the evolution of the mental or metaphysical forces by which mankind will surely attain its full development and dominion. Until the modern development of science and invention of the nineteenth century had become a part of the common practice and common knowledge of the civilized races, only the prophet or seer could forecast the conditions of peace, order, and mutual service which we have as yet so partially attained. Have we not now a basis for an inductive social science in this development? May we not rest assured or continue our work with full assurance that the humane element in the Divinity which shapes our ends and the divine element in the humanity to which has been given dominion over the forces which make for welfare, will be so combined and harmonized that the time will surely come when all mankind shall be free of what has been rightly named the hell of war?

Conclusion.—The ultimate suppression of war by the evolution of the forces of commerce may be well assured. War, however necessary it may sometimes be, must always remain a survival of brute or unintelligent force. Commerce, however restricted by the lack of intelligence among legislators, is yet an evolution of mental force, by which it is directed and by which it will ultimately dominate brute