There is a form of discrimination here, including the distinction of men as persons, the claims involved in personal rights, and the phase of individual duty ascertained while contemplating the circumstances in the midst of which it is needful to act. All this is outside the range of the formulated results of physiological research. There can be no hesitation in accepting all that has been established as to nerve-sensibility,-the subjection of human life to the interaction of external influences,and the inevitable forms of experience which result in individual history. But we see in these, only conditions in the midst of which man by exercise of his intelligence is to undertake the management of life on a higher level than that of animal life. We clearly recognize the laws of motor activity, including the full bearing of outward influences, and inward tendencies upon human action. But with these things we see what is meant when it is recognized that intellect must govern passion: while we see physiological science laying open to us only the laws of passion, and not the law for its government. We admit the convincing nature of the evidence by which it is shown that our nature

with all the special phases of individuality, often involving strange perils and perplexities, has been inherited by us, gathering within the boundaries of our life a task which we would willingly have shunned. We perceive in this a science of the specialities of individual nature, standing alongside the science explaining the common characteristics of man which come within the range of physiological research. But it is beyond this, that the problem arises concerning the moral government of life, so that equally what is common, and what is peculiar to man shall be regulated according to rational law. For this all see to be true, excepting always cases of manifest infirmity and disorder, that equally the common and the special powers of the individual are to be regulated by the law of benevolence. There are no exemptions for special temperament, whatever diversities there may be in the task which application of the law may involve for some. The ought has ascendency over human life; the bare perception of this grand reality, taken with all the distinctions involved in its application to personal conduct, * See Appendix XIII.

and all the forms of personal control exercised for its fulfilment, lies apart from the discoveries of physiology. In these things we see most clearly what mind is, and what mind does in the management of human life. We discover clearly thus what it is which makes human life superior to the life of the animals around us; what it is which makes the best in human life stand essentially connected with the subordination of the animal nature to a higher nature within; and in what respect it stands true that physiology is a science of only a part of our nature, and that the lower, because the subject part. In this man knows, apart from all science, and quite independently of philosophy too, that he has a higher life, working, rejoicing, and advancing to nobler excellence, just as he governs his body, keeping it in subjection, while revering an ideal of moral and spiritual excellence towards the attainment of which it is the duty and honor of humanity to strive.

LECTURE VIII.

RELATION OF SCIENCE TO OUR CONCEPTIONS OF DIVINE INTERPOSITION FOR MORAL GOVERNMENT IN THE WORLD.

THE

'HE view given in previous lectures of the most prominent features of the recent advances in scientific knowledge most intimately concerning our religious conceptions of the origin and government of the world, may afford some aid towards forming a judgment of the points of contact and apparent conflict. A brief summary will afford the best introduction to the lines of inquiry with which the present discussion may be brought to a close.

First, as to the inorganic in the universe, recent investigations favor the conclusion that neither the matter in the world, nor the energy, can be increased or diminished by operation of any laws known to apply to such existence. The laws under which these two forms of being hold their place in the world

involve only change of distribution and relation. Both matter and energy are, however, perpetually undergoing change or transformation, and whether the change be for the better or for the worse in the history of the universe as a whole, the fact of unceasing change in subordination to fixed law, is clear evidence that matter and energy are not eternal or self-subsisting, but are dependent on some transcendent existence imposing the laws determining their relations.

Second, as to organized existence, recent researches go to prove that there is in all animals a measure of adaptability to surrounding conditions of life, providing for "adaptive changes" in the organism, which become fixed, and are transmitted to succeeding generations of the same order under the law of heredity. On warrant of the evidence for this, it is to be taken as certain that the various orders of animals now familiar to us did not at first come into being with all the characteristics now pertaining to them. The law of their life has provided for a progression in development, in accordance with which we have distinct orders of the pigeon, the dog, and the horse, with variations in animals of