history for all its guidance. Meanwhile the evolutionist has reached a conception of things in which all appears consistent. For him the whole course of nature is one; and out of this natural course, and in spite of the stern and saddening facts witnessed to as incidental to that course, he believes that the ideas of "God," of "goodness," of "duty," and "conscience," have normally arisen. Each beautiful thing, no less than each blundering thing, has arrived naturally, and amounts, so far as it goes, to a warrant each time it arrives of a path rightly grooved and a momentum rightly directed.

The only way we can aid the cosmical endeavour is through the amelioration of human lot in our fellows and ourselves: ourselves with and through and in our fellows. For on our planet human history represents the vanguard of the eternal forces. We have to make our race the channel of "least resistance" through which the forward impulse can, with least hindrance and least liability to miscarriage, work, formatively and splendidly, toward that consummation which means the fullest degree of life, awareness, beauty, and will, with the least degree of pain, distress, and drawback of any kind.

But the amelioration of human lot, whether "morally" (that is, for human creatures' own piteous sakes) or "religiously" (that is, for sake of awed and enthusiastic participation in the supreme cosmical Effort, sympathy with which constitutes the youngest and highest form of spiritual life), whether in the moral or religious count-amelioration of human lot can only be accomplished through amelioration of human character. As Herbert Spencer says, it is impossible to get "golden conduct" out of "leaden instincts." Golden instincts in human breasts would make of our planet a new earth in which dwelleth righteousness. Golden instincts depend, however, on character; and the amelioration of human character, though it has ever been going on, is a very slow process. There is no jumping to perfection. All reward comes to the accurate observer and courageous follower of eternal natural law; but as Jesus sadly said, "Strait is the gate and narrow the way that leadeth unto life," and (in proportion to those who miss it) those who find and follow it are still the very "few."

Meanwhile there remains the fact that there is a right and lifeward way; that it is findable, and that to pursue it is to reach, or to help reach, that which when reached is felt to be the consummate goal. The unhesitating onwardness of the natural casual process, the permanence of relations, the constant multiplication of effects, and the necessity of clearing the way for the developing whole, if one would not be crushed by it, remain serious facts. But it is at every instant and every juncture of events possible so to act as to make things in general better without making things in particular worse, and to make things in particular better without making things in general worse. This is meliorism. And meliorism is the moral principle which naturally and logically ensues on full comprehension and appreciaVOL. I.-pt. 2.

3 F

tion of the doctrine I have in this article tried to set forth. The social sentiency known as conscience once actually established comes to put in its own claim for survival as a source of pleasure to the fit social being, and hence is clung to for its own sake. It then becomes (like all other habit, whether physical, nervous, or manual) structural and organic; it becomes "character" in the final sense-that is, natural and spontaneous; it becomes instinctive; it becomes imperative; and pain attends its repression.

And mark this that solution of all human problems, that bearer of all burdens, that sight for all blindness-the Sympathy which, pre-eminently in women, "weeps with those who weep," and which, pre-eminently in men," rejoices with those who rejoice,"-this very sympathy is one of the instinctively exercised functions which the benign but difficult process of evolution has, through the natural workings of this adamantine universe, yielded as its supreme fruit.

The "Genesis" book of the evolution theory treats of the apparently blind, lifeward striving of matter in motion. Its book of "Revelation" points to the Sympathy which welds the fortunes of moral and socialized living beings; a Sympathy of the units with one another, and of each unit with the Supreme, Eternal, and Inexhaustible Totality.

787

THE ETHICAL MOVEMENT DEFINED.

BY DR. STANTON COIT.

THE aims and principles of the Ethical movement are so very simple that any one, although with no philosophical education, may both understand and sit in judgment upon them. I need not speak in parables, or use symbolic language; but there is need of explanation. People are so accustomed, when religion is spoken of, to look for mystical and transcendental ideas, which are remote from men's common every-day thoughts, that when the whole nature of the Ethical Movement has been explained, they still look for something further. Its very simplicity makes them fail to understand it, or, if they understand, they fail to appreciate it. that all?" they are apt to exclaim. But we count it no defect in our Ethical Movement that it is thus simple and close to the working thoughts of every-day life. This simplicity is one reason for the hope that it will some day reorganize the spiritual life of civilized nations. Let me now set

forth our main doctrines.

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The first of these is, that the bond of religious union should be solely devotion to the good in the world. By "the good" is meant simply a certain quality of human character and conduct: the quality which we have in mind when we say that a judge is good because he is impartial; that a father is good because he looks out for the lasting welfare of his children; that a brother is good, because he causes his sister no pain if he can help it; that a citizen is good because he is willing to sacrifice personal gain to the prosperity of the whole people. The desire to spread more and more this quality of conduct and character, and to root out badness from human life is, we affirm, the true bond of religious union among men. Nothing could be clearer and more definite than this doctrine; we aim to preach it everywhere. We believe that by declaring devotion to the good in the world to be the bond, and the whole bond, of religious union we shall ultimately induce men to remove all other qualifications for membership in churches; and that, immediately, men who are now outside of all religious fellowship, or who chafe under the dogmatic restraint of the Church, will form themselves into societies for the spread of goodness, and that such fellowships will be the means of thorough and permanent social reforms in politics, in education, and in family and industrial life. This idea of forming societies in devotion to good character and right conduct we believe stands equal in dignity and power with Christ's conception of a kingdom of God on earth, and that it comes to-day with all the freshness

and vigour of a new social revelation, for which, however, the ages of Christian development have been preparing men's hearts and intellects. Not only is the idea clear and definite in itself, but when embodied in a society we have a social institution distinct from every other now existing. An Ethical Society, a fellowship solely in devotion to the good in the world, is wholly distinct from every Christian Church, whether Orthodox or Unitarian; for the Church, besides devotion to the spread of goodness in the world, demands allegiance to a personal Creator of the Universe. An Ethical Society, therefore, differs from every Christian Church in that its basis in the first place is clearer and simpler, is capable of being understood by the most ignorant man of ordinary intelligence, because all men know at least sufficiently well for practical judgment what goodness in human character is. But the idea of a personal Creator of the Universe has baffled the speculative efforts of the best disciplined and philosophic minds. In simplicity, therefore, an Ethical Society may claim precedence over any Christian Church, and from this it follows that an Ethical Society is in its very nature more suited to men of average intelligence and of busy life. But it also differs from Christian Churches in being broader in its fellowship. It excludes no one because of scepticism as to the existence and personality of God or the divinity of Christ. But, on the other hand, let it be distinctly known that we are not, as a society, Agnostic. We do not deny the possibility of knowing the existence of God. We do not request or exact that a man shall first give up his belief in a personal God and immortality before he shall become a member of our societies. simply ask that he have a direct desire to plant good conduct and root out evil. As a society we are not pledged to any theory as to the origin of the universe, or of conscience itself, nor to any theory as to the limits of human knowledge. We are not an Agnostic Society; we have no theory at all, as a society, concerning the limits of knowledge, therefore the charge which has been made against us that we are Agnostic is due to a misunderstanding.

We

When, on the other hand, it is brought as an objection against us that we have no theory which accounts for the moral enthusiasm which we possess and manifest, we point out the following distinction: as a society we have no such theory, but each individual member may entertain whatever theory addresses itself to his reason as true. One may be a Theist, another a Materialist, another an Atheist. We simply maintain that no one shall make his theory a barrier between himself and his fellow-men. And yet let no one infer from our emphasis of goodness in human conduct that we set it up in the place of God as an object to worship. We recognise that goodness is purely an abstraction; that unless it exist in concrete acts and dispositions of the human will it has no reality or value for us. We make no fetish of it; it does not exist except as we are good; we cannot say, therefore, that in our view of life and the universe it takes the place which God or Christ holds in the Christian view, except simply that

it is the bond of human fellowship and brotherhood. We demand that no one shall make the ideas of God and immortality the bond of religious union, that no one shall place any moral blame or stigma upon any other man for not holding them.

But although thus different from all Christian Churches, it does not follow that we approach any nearer to non-Christian religious fellowships, which have recently sprung up, than we do to the Christian Churches. We are quite as distinct from Positivism, Secularism, and Socialism.

The Positivists set up the worship of Humanity, adoration of the great and good men of the past regarded as constituting an organic being, as the bond of religious fellowship. We do not condemn in itself the adoration of Humanity so long as it be not made the bond of fellowship; but when set up as the foundation of a new Church we count it as unjust and unwise. It is unjust to every man who cannot naturally cast his motives for doing good chiefly into a sense of gratitude for the good which he has received from humanity. Many a man has a feeling that although he had derived no good and perfect gifts from humanity, still that he should and would serve his fellow-men; in short, the love of mankind is in many a heart deeper than the conscious debt of gratitude. We are, furthermore, distinguished from Positivists in not exacting special recognition of Auguste Comte and his services. Nor do we, like the Positivists, recognise for a moment that the basis of religious fellowship is the sum total of all the positive sciences constituting the philosophic doctrine of the universe. We believe that science becomes an unjust dogma the moment it is made the basis of a Church. The worship of Humanity and the doctrines of positive sciences are the Positivist bond, while ours is simply the furtherance of good character and right conduct.

Equally distinct are we also from the Secularists. The Secularists, as their very name implies, are reactionists against theology; whereas we dedemand simply that theology be not made the condition of spiritual fellowship. Moreover, the Secularists, while affirming the dignity and worth of this world, and attempting to reconstruct society, do not lay down good character and right conduct as the starting-point of all social reform; in this we are more definite than they; they are in danger of incoherence— now setting up political power and now industrial revolution as the true means of making society happy and just; whereas we would start from the moral sentiment and recognise that mechanical changes in institutions and the execution of better laws must be supported by the moral consciousness of the community. Environment and law also affect character; but the impetus toward the doing away with evil conditions of life must arise in men who are bound together for the spread of goodness in the world.

We are also distinguished from the Socialists. I for one never met a sincere Socialist who did not, like ourselves, have the good of the world at heart; but, as the Church condemns any one who does not believe in a personal God by excluding him from fellowship, so the Socialists, by the