the relative value of the two systems of
thought when put to a practical test in human affairs. Imagine an
unscrupulous man of great mental capacity who is amassing an enormous
fortune through sharp practices that enable him to acquire the earnings
of others while he safely keeps just within the limits of the law. We
can point out to him that while he is not violating the law, and cannot
therefore be prosecuted, he is nevertheless inflicting injury upon
others and consequently public opinion will condemn him. But such a man
usually cares nothing at all for public opinion and he sees no good
reason why he should not continue in his injurious work. But if he can
be made to understand that all life is one and that we are so knit
together in consciousness that an injury to another must ultimately
react upon the person who inflicts it; if he once clearly understands
that to enslave another is to put chains upon himself, that to maim
another is to strike himself, he will require neither the fear of an
exterior hell nor the threat of legal penalties to induce him to follow
a moral course. He would see that his own larger and true self-interest
could be served only when his conduct was in harmony with the welfare of
all. It is but a simple statement of the truth to say that the immanence
of God furnishes a scientific basis of morality.

FOOTNOTES:

[A] Psalms LXXXII--6.

CHAPTER III.

THE EVOLUTION OF THE SOUL

If we accept the idea of the immanence of God we shall be forced to
abandon belief in a miraculous instantaneous creation of man and the
earth on which he exists. The old, absurd, unscientific, impossible idea
that the race came from an original human pair must be replaced by the
hypothesis of the evolution of the soul.

It was about the fact of evolution that the great storm of controversy
raged between scientists and theologians in the middle of the nineteenth
century, and later. The evolutionary truths were not at first well
understood. They seemed to question or deny the existence of God. Deep
within humanity is intuitive religious belief. It is a natural faith
that transcends all facts, like the faith of a child in its mother.
Because evolution was contrary to all preconceived ideas of the earth's
inception it seemed at first to shatter faith and destroy hope, and
against fact and reason itself rose the protest of intuition with
spiritual intensity. People felt more than they reasoned and cried out