crippling His personality, it gives full and free expression to it.”

This change in the conception of evolution has come about through a clear recognition of the existence of psychic and spiritual forces in human environment, which, acting upon all nature, demand in return a complete adjustment of the lower to the higher. This adjustment calls into play the exercise of all the higher faculties of the mind and makes them, in coöperation with spiritual forces outside the individual the determining force in evolution. "Ye must be born from above."

At least three sources of support for this view are at hand; the teaching of some prominent scientists and sociologists, the teaching of the New Testament as interpreted in history and the events of the world war. Let us consider briefly these three groups of facts.

1. The first element in the chain of accumulative evidence in support of this view of evolution is the teaching of prominent sociologists. In the summer, of 1910, while engaged in some research work in the Pratt Library in Brooklyn, I first came into direct contact with the teachings of Professor Lester Ward, the great American sociologist. We quote from him as follows:

"If nature's process is rightly named natural selection, man's process is artificial selection. The survival of the fittest is simply the survival of the strong, which implies, and might as well be called, the destruction of the weak. And if nature pro

gresses through the destruction of the weak, man progresses through the protection of the weak. This is the essential distinction.

"In human society the psychic power has operated to secure the protection of the weak in two distinct ways: First, by increasing the supply of the necessities of life, and, secondly, by preventing the destruction of life through the enemies of man. The immediate instrumentality through which the first of these processes is carried on is art, the product of invention. The second process takes place through the establishment of positive institutions.

"Art operates to protect the weak against adverse surroundings. It is directed against natural forces, chiefly physical. By thus defeating the destructive influences of the elements and hostile forms of life, and by forcing nature to yield an unnatural supply of man's necessities, many who would have succumbed from inability to resist these adverse agencies-the feebler members of society-were able to survive, and population increased and expanded. While no one openly denies this, there is a tendency either to ignore it, in politico-economic discussions, or to deny its application to them as an answer to naturalistic arguments.

"If, on the other hand, we inquire into the nature of human institutions, we shall perceive that they are of three kinds, tending to protect the weak in three ways, or ascending degrees. These three successively higher means through which this end is

attained are: first, Justice; second, Morality, and third, Charity. These forms of action have been reached through the development, respectively, of the three corresponding sentiments: Equity, Beneficence, and Benevolence.

"All of these altruistic sentiments are wholly unknown, or known only in the merest embryo, to all animals below man, and therefore no such means of protection exist among them. They are strictly human, or anthropic. Many evolutionists fail to recognize this. Some sociologists refuse to admit it. They look about and see so much injustice, immorality, and rapacity that they are led to suppose that only natural methods are in operation in society. This is a great mistake. In point of fact, the keener the sense of justice the more conspicuous the diminishing number of violations of it come to appear, and conversely, the obviousness of injustice proves the general prevalence of justice. It is the same with morality and philanthropy."

In speaking of the future supremacy of the psychic method of evolution, Professor Ward says: "These ends will be secured in proportion as the true nature of mind is understood. When nature comes to be regarded as passive and man as active, instead of the reverse as now, when human action is recognized as the most important of all forms of action, and when the power of the human intellect over vital, psychic, and social phenomena is practically conceded, then, and then only, can man justly claim to have risen out of the animal

and fully to have entered the human stage of development."

The second force at work in the world leading men to a spiritual view of life is the teachings of the New Testament as leaven in society. In England it issued in the Magna Charta; in France it became a passion for Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity; in the United States of America it appeared as American Idealism. In a previous chapter we indicated the nature of this idealism, which is the growth of the ideals of justice, morality, benevolence, liberty and love in the individuals, as exemplified in the character and teachings of Jesus, and the firm belief that these same ideals can be made the governing principles of nations in their relations one to another. In spite of her rapid growth in material possessions and in political power America has refused to surrender her ideals to lust for wealth and territorial conquest. The philosophy of brute force has gone down under a vital idealism.

The events of the world war are changing profoundly our view of life. A complete analysis of the facts involved will be impossible for years; we can present only a few:

(a) Drunk with conscious power, Germany turned from commercial efficiency and intellectual conquest to a colossal organization of brute force and frightfulness. The result was one horrible, lurid day and then the bitter night of defeat. The truth is, that autocratic Germany, the logical cre

ation of the philosophy of survival by force, was defending her existence against the assaults of democratic ideas from without and from within. The issue was clear to all thinking Germans; it was either survival through world domination by physical force, or the passing of autocracy into the limbo of extinct species.

(b) The gradual emerging of the issues from a petty inter-European quarrel to a spiritual plane, when for the first time in history a nation was summoned to the bar of international conscience and indicted on moral grounds for going to war, is a fact of immense moral and spiritual significance. To this should be added the further fact of the rapid unification of American thought and life and the willingness of the American people to make limitless sacrifice of men and money in behalf of a long cherished Christian ideal.

(c) A third fact worthy of note was the gradual emerging from the conflict of the inherent rights of small nations and the duty and obligations of the strong toward the weak as a governing principle in social development. Contrast the attitude of America and Germany as revealed in the conversation between the Hon. Henry Morganthau, the American representative, and Herr Wagenheim, the German representative at Constantinople.

"We again discussed the Armenian deportation,” writes Mr. Morganthau in the World's Work.

"Germany is not responsible for this," Wagenheim said.