it takes a long while to bring public sentiment or the social conscience back to the same position it held before.

The final stage, however, in the evolution of the moral sense carries us a long distance from its starting-point. It strikes me as perplexing that, when speaking of moral conduct, this is assumed to apply only to relations between one and another person. Many people would fancy that morality has no meaning save as it refers to conduct between human creatures in their relations to each other. In telling the story of morality, its growth or evolution, it is usual to describe how respect for rights took shape, and to what extent men refrained from murder, stealing, or telling lies; as if lying, stealing, or murder practically made up the whole of what we call bad conduct, against which the ethical sense is supposed to set itself. In a word, the evolution of conscience is often supposed to be only another name for the evolution of what is termed altruism, fellow-feeling, mutual goodwill, and the conduct which flows from such good-will. In discussing the origin of morality, we are supposed to try to explain why man is not wholly a selfish being, or how it is to be accounted for that unselfishness got root in human nature. If we can account for this, it is often assumed that we have covered the whole subject.

But this is only half the story. The last phase in the evolution of conscience is of another kind. We have built only half our bridges by sketching out the growth of altruistic sentiment and the recognition of the commands of the decalogue. Conscience at its highest stage would seem to take on a form of egoism instead of altruism, although of a peculiar kind. It would by no means be the same egoism which prevailed at the start, when the sympathies were first getting shape and fellow-feeling was arising. It would not mean the brute selfassertiveness, the struggle of might to conquer and absorb everything for one's self.

We must take into account that the soul or the spiritual life changes as the human creature goes on advancing, and as he is gradually emancipated from the social tissue or the social consciousness. When self-conscious personality arises, the experi

ences of the soul have another character. So long as the human creature is just a part of the social tissue, the relations to be considered in the applications of the moral sense to conduct are those between man and his fellows. If we pronounce judgment, we should say that an act was wrong because it injured another man. On the other hand, when the soul has assumed its real shape, the judgment is pronounced from another standpoint. The act might be beneficial to a fellow-creature, and yet we might decide against it. In a word, the relation from that time exists between the act, on the one hand, and the motive, purpose, impulse, or ideal, within the man himself, on the other. It would be perfectly conceivable, as we have intimated already, for a man to be guilty of a crime, and become so haunted with remorse as finally to give himself up to the punishment of the law, even though he had no religious scruples whatever. Conscience would act in such a case with reference to a man's conduct in relation to himself. We say that such a man has broken a law of his own being, that he has acted in defiance of his best self, or his true self.

Suppose the case of a man lost in a wilderness, with no hope whatever of escape for the rest of his life; left there to spend all his days in solitude. What if such an individual, in the first despair over the outlook, should give himself over to a drunken debauch-assuming he had the means for this at command.

true - is it not?

In such a case, would conscience have anything to say, as a subjective experience? We should answer, I suppose, that it would depend on the man. Yes, beyond a doubt. But it is that after that debauch was over, the individual might go through an experience of intense shame. And why? He would have broken no command of the decalogue. He would have committed no offense against his fellow-men. Would it be the moral sense speaking there? Yes, I believe it would be precisely what we term conscience. would be a subjective relationship. The man had broken a law of his own being-apart from any religious law he may also have defied. In a moment of despondency he had allowed himself to relapse from his manhood to the state of the brute.

But in such a case it

on

There had been a surrender on the part of the man in him, the part of that something in his nature which lifted him above the animal kingdom, by a superior endowment making him one of a spiritual kingdom.

If we are able to trace the entire origin of conscience to what has been going on in the animal kingdom, and to see it as the compounding of instincts which have proved useful in binding creatures together in societies, then why is it that enlightenment and intelligence should not extirpate conscience, as a burden or a bore? The very man who believes all this, and has accepted it theoretically as a philosopher, may nevertheless find himself writhing under the pangs of remorse, which he cannot extirpate. It would imply that there was something in him which his doctrine had not accounted for.

As I conceive it, when our inner, spiritual life has reached a certain stage, when the soul has come to a certain degree of its high development, the gnawings of conscience because one has been guilty of theft, or a lie, or murder, may not be because one has been guilty of a breach of fellow-feeling, or done an injury to some other person, but because one has broken a law of one's own nature. As we should express it in common language, he has gone back on himself. And in such cases conscience would be the voice holding the man up to his level as a man, as a member of the kingdom of men, rather than as a member of the animal kingdom.

The kingdom of souls is not the same as the kingdom of physical nature. In every living human creature there is a potential element which cuts him off from the whole brute kingdom. We can never carry development beyond a certain point with the animal creature. At a certain stage we reach a condition. of arrested development. All the effort we may make will not help us any further with that creature. With the human being we are not prepared to accept the doctrine of a necessarily arrested development. The potentiality there we look upon as unlimited. If there is mystery at this point, it is only the mystery we must face, and should be proud to recognize or accept, in believing in our superiority to the brute kingdom. The

moral sense or conscience, therefore, in the final stage of souldevelopment or spiritual culture, is what holds the soul to its high level, or what is goading the human creature on to reach or fulfil all the capacities of his nature, to live his life out as a member of the kingdom of souls. In an act of theft or murder, as much as in an act of drunken debauchery, he has broken the law of a spiritual kingdom. He has committed an offense against himself or his own soul.

Once more, it strikes me, we are in the realm of the unexplainable in the story of conscience. Does the struggle for existence account for the self-loathing at the loss of one's selfrespect? Can it show why a man should feel haunted, almost as with remorse, if on looking back over the past week he is aware that he has lived, but accomplished nothing? The gnawing sense of regret over wasted opportunity or a wasted life, over the consciousness of having possessed gifts one has not put to use, the disappointment at having lived on an inferior plane instead of rising to the full height of one's being and capacities-this surely is a phase of the moral sense. But could the coming of all this have been anticipated according to the assumed laws of evolution? Humanly speaking, it just came! We fail to see just what utility function it serves in the economy of nature. On the intellectual side, as on the sympathy side, conscience would seem as yet in its appearance to belong to the sphere of mystery. Evolution does not explain a Sartor Resartus any more than it explains a Jean Valjean.

I speak of this as the final stage, not as if it were a stage which shows itself in all people, or even in every individual among civilized races. It is the direction toward which the evolution of conscience is tending. True, the remorse over an act of treachery, of theft, or of meanness toward a fellow-being, is probably greater than would ensue from surrendering one's self to a drunken debauch. In the last instance one may say that one has injured no one but one's self, and that no one but one's self is concerned. Yet I am not sure but that for a highly developed human being to be guilty of such an act of meanness or treachery to a fellow human being indicates a lesser relapse

than an act of drunken debauchery would imply. From the highest standpoint the voice of conscience would speak the same with reference to either experience.

It would seem, therefore, as if it were only in the middle period of the evolution of conscience that we must turn to the science of sociology for explanation as to its history. Our relation to a social medium has been an essential step in the process. But in its highest form ethical law is not dealing with social relationships. Its one exaction is that each man shall keep his spiritual nature untarnished. This is what I should understand by speaking of it as "the law of one's own being." In doing this we shall, as a matter of course, recognize and obey the codes of law which connect us with our fellows. In acting against one another, by injuring one another, we should be lapsing to the stage of the brute. Spiritual forces would act as one force; competition there would have no meaning. Among souls, brotherhood would be the natural thing.

If I am right, then the story of evolution would tell us, as the last, crowning feature of all, that the kernel or core of all religions points in the same way: To thine own self be true. In the highest sense of the word, it would mean the same thing as being true to one's God, and true to one's fellow-men; because it would mean being true to the soul or to the highest self. WALTER L. SHELDON.

ST. LOUIS.