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school are unwise, cramming the children with too many. subjects, and doing little to prepare them for practical life. Our system of dealing with the Indians is an outrageous The country should learn the facts by sending patient, competent observers to study the frontier relations. The actual constitutional and legal relation of the national government to the governments and people of the several States is of profound importance, on account of the abnormal relations which have grown out of the civil war. The actual relation of the national government to South Carolina and Mississippi is precisely the same as its relation to Rhode Island and Massachusetts; and the partisan politicians who, for their own personal purposes, have done what they could to inflame sectional hatred and jealousy are traitors; and it is a pitiful sight to see religious editors, who profess to follow the Prince of Peace, following in the lead of unscrupulous partisans, and dealing out denunciations and menaces against citizens of other States. The true scientific method here calls for an adequate study of the condition of the South, which, with the patient devotion of religious influence, shall cultivate the feeling of fraternity between the people of all parts of our common country. The vicious juvenile literature demands our attention. Many of the books read in "cultivated families" are written by persons who would not be admitted to the house as friends or guests. The scientific method requires that we should live with our children, and thus guide them in their reading.

The conditions and circumstances of the laboring men. and their families, and the tendencies of their thought and feeling, are almost unknown to the cultivated classes. This is the greatest of all social interests in America, and a constantly widening chasm is opening. There is some injustice and great misunderstanding on both sides; and the workingmen are coming more and more under the influence of earnest men, who sincerely teach the most dangerous doctrines. The scientific method suggests that we must study the people, and teach them. The people of wealth and culture are responsible for the education and character of

the laboring classes; and unless they will freely share their culture and education with the less fortunate, they cannot hope to retain their position of pecuniary advantage. We ought to expend a million of dollars in new means and agencies for teaching the people, during the next three years, as a beginning; and, considering the pecuniary losses it would prevent, it would be a profitable business enterprise. We need small books and newspapers and magazines, prepared especially for the education of the working-people; and cultivated people should learn to speak to the uneducated classes in simple language, without any stilted elegancies of style and language. We have put absolute political power into the hands of capricious, unreasoning majorities; and the only scientific remedy for our evils is the instruction. and education of the people. The essayist speaks on this subject from the most earnest convictions, founded on long, careful, scientific study of the conditions of American society. The condition of the prisons and insane asylums, the character of the national currency, the existence of powerful corporations,—all demand this scientific attention. We must learn from our hard experience to adopt means to prevent the recurrence of hard times, which, if they come. again, will be likely to be more disastrous than the business depression from which we are now slowly recovering. The feeling that, if the workingmen do not threaten serious disturbance of the public peace, we need not care much to improve their condition, is unscientific and immoral. They need teaching and guidance; and if we do not share our advantages with them, we shall not be able to retain those advantages ourselves. These are some of the chief things which demand the scientific method of dealing with social interests in this time of rapid and unexpected social changes.

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In every village the ministers might do much, working with a few serious young men and women, to quicken the general life around them, develop public spirit, and guide it into work for real improvement in the way of better reading, better sanitary conditions, and closer and more general co-operation among the people formoral ends. This would soon quicken and improve the life of the whole nation,

ETHICAL LAW AND SOCIAL ORDER.

BY REV. GEORGE BATCHELOR.

AFTER this essay was planned and partly composed, the publication of Mr. Spencer's Data of Ethics made it necessary for your essayist to suspend his work until he could determine, by such examination as the time would allow, whether he should continue it as an independent student of ethical science, or come here as an exponent of the doctrines of Mr. Spencer. A careful reading of Mr. Spencer's book has convinced me that it does not contain all the data of

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ethics, and moreover - what is more to my purpose as a believer in the general doctrine of evolution - it does not contain the most important conclusions which may be drawn by one who accepts the general principles and methods which have shaped Mr. Spencer's system. As it stands, The Data of Ethics does not furnish such an explanation of ethical evolution as would give us a complete history of the past; nor such an exposition of ethical principles as might furnish a sufficient standard for the future.

In studying ethics and the law of social evolution, we must remember one characteristic of the science wherein it differs from many others. We are to inquire not merely what is, but also what ought to be; and not merely what ought to be in accordance with immutable laws which work beyond human control, but also what ought to be in regard to means and ends which are to be the result of human choice, willing, and action,

The discussion will be limited to a consideration of human life upon the earth. For although the ethical conceptions of one who believes in God and the immortal life cannot be precisely the same as those of one who does not believe in them, the influence of religion upon ethics will not change the nature of moral action nor shift its standards. It will have its effect rather upon the intensity of conviction, the energy with which moral ends will be pursued, the emphasis to be laid upon certain duties, and the account to be made of conceivable results which extend beyond the limits of terrestrial life.

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Thirty years ago Mr. Spencer wrote of the "Divine Idea," and of "Scientific Morality" as a "statement of the mode in which life must be regulated so as to conform" to the conditions under which that idea was to be realized. To-day he drops the phrase and the method; and without detriment to our argument we may follow his example.

Ethics, according to Mr. Spencer, "has for its subjectmatter that form which universal conduct assumes during the last stages of its evolution." "Acts are called good or bad according as they are well or ill adjusted to ends." In the ethical sense, "conduct is considered by us as good or bad, according as its aggregate results, to self or others or both, are pleasurable or painful." "Pleasure somewhere, at some time, to some being or beings, is an inexpugnable element of the conception."

Conduct is considered under four aspects, as physical, biological, psychological, and sociological.

Taking the physical view, the progress of evolution is toward a moving equilibrium, and consists in the passage "from an indefinite, incoherent homogeneity to a definite, coherent heterogeneity." (For popular use, the formula would be not less exact and more expressive, if we should render it, "the passage from an indefinite, incoherent sameness to a definite, coherent diversity.) As the physical life becomes more definite, coherent, and diversified, the rhythm of internal actions and the rhythm of external actions must be so adjusted to each other that the combined motions of

all kinds will duly meet every daily process, every ordinary occurrence, and every contingency of one's environment.

From the biological point of view, the process of evolution leads by a like method to a balance of functions. Every function must be performed in such a way as to maintain complete life for the time being, and also to prolong life, while it affords an immediate quantum of pleasure. "Actions are completely right only when, besides being conducive to future happiness, special and general, they are immediately pleasurable," and "painfulness, not only ultimate but proximate, is the concomitant of actions which are wrong." "It matters not, from the biological point of view, whether the motives prompting them are high or low. The vital functions accept no apologies on the ground that neglect of them was unavoidable, or that the reason for neglect was noble."

From the psychological point of view, the problem is more complex. "Here we have to consider represented pleasures and pains, sensational and emotional, as constituting deliberate motives, as forming factors in the conscious adjustment of acts to ends."

Evolution is from the simple to the complex. Feelings acquire authority as they become compound. "Proximate results are compared with remote. The more ideal motives concern ends that are more distant." The genesis of the moral consciousness occurs when the effort is made to bring some feeling or feelings under the control of some other feeling or feelings. In passing from the state in which immediate and simple ends are always sought, men pass under three restraints, which, though not moral, prepare for the emergence of the moral restraint. These three are the social restraint, beginning in the mutual fear of savages; the political restraint, beginning in the fear of chiefs; the religious restraint, beginning in the fear of ghosts. These three controls severally lead men to subordinate proximate satisfactions to remote satisfactions, "yet they do not constitute moral control, but are only preparatory to it, are controls within which the moral control evolves." The restraints properly distinguished as moral refer not to the extrinsic,

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