this is desirable provided one is
qualified to own a farm; nor of rhapsodies on the beauties of nature.
Nor am I thinking of any new plan or any novel kind of institution or
any new agency; rather shall we do better to escape some of the
excessive institutionalism and organization. We are so accustomed to
think in terms of organized politics and education and religion and
philanthropies that when we detach ourselves we are said to lack
definiteness. It is the personal satisfaction in the earth to which we
are born, and the quickened responsibility, the whole relation, broadly
developed, of the man and of all men,--it is this attitude that we are
to discuss.

The years pass and they grow into centuries. We see more clearly. We are
to take a new hold.

_The brotherhood relation_

A constructive and careful handling of the resources of the earth is
impossible except on a basis of large co-operation and of association
for mutual welfare. The great inventions and discoveries of recent time
have extensive social significance.

Yet we have other relations than with the physical and static materials.
We are parts in a living sensitive creation. The theme of evolution has
overturned our attitude toward this creation. The living creation is not
exclusively man-centred: it is bio-centric. We perceive the essential
continuity in nature, arising from within rather than from without, the
forms of life proceeding upwardly and onwardly in something very like a
mighty plan of sequence, man being one part in the process. We have
genetic relation with all living things, and our aristocracy is the
aristocracy of nature. We can claim no gross superiority and no isolated
self-importance. The creation, and not man, is the norm. Even now do we
begin to guide our practises and our speech by our studies of what we
still call the lower creation. We gain a good perspective on ourselves.

If we are parts in the evolution, and if the universe, or even the
earth, is not made merely as a footstool, or as a theatre for man, so do
we lose our cosmic selfishness and we find our place in the plan of
things. We are emancipated from ignorance and superstition and small
philosophies. The present wide-spread growth of the feeling of
brotherhood would have been impossible in a self-centred creation: the
way has been prepared by the discussion of evolution, which is the major
biological contribution to human welfare and progress. This is the
philo