gin of species through the struggle for
existence and the survival of the fittest, and if the equally august and
authoritative dogma of the transmission by inheritance of acquired
characteristics were longer tenable, then perhaps we might invoke faith,
hope and patience and continue our generous method of imperilling
present society while we fixed our eyes on the vision of that to come
when environment, education and heredity had accomplished their perfect
work. Unfortunately--or perhaps fortunately--science is rapidly
reconsidering its earlier and somewhat hasty conclusions, and the
consensus of the most authoritative opinion seems to be that we must
believe these things no longer. Failing these premises, on which we have
laboured so long and so honestly and so sincerely, we are again thrown
back on the testimony of history and our own observation, and with this
reversal we also are bound to reconsider both our premises and the
constitution of those systems and institutions we have erected on them
as a foundation.

The existence of a general law does not exclude exceptions. The fact
that in the case of human beings we have to take into consideration a
powerful factor that does not come into play in the domain of zooelogy
and botany--the immortal soul--makes impossible the drawing of exact
deductions from precedents therein established. This determining touch
of the divine, which is no result of biological processes, but stands
outside the limitations of heredity and environment and education, may
manifest itself quite as well in one class as in another, for "God is no
respecter of persons." As has been said before, there is no difference
in degree as between immortal souls. The point is, however, that each is
linked to a specific congeries of tendencies, limitations, effective or
defective agencies, that are what they have been made by the parents of
the race. These may be such as enable the soul to triumph in its earthly
experience and in its bodily housing; they may be such as will bring
about failure and defeat. It is not that the soul builds itself "more
stately mansions"; it is that these are provided for it by the physical
processes of life, and it is almost the first duty of man to see that
they are well built.

Again, the soul is single and personal; as it is not a plexus of
inherited tendencies, so it is not heritable, and a great soul showing
suddenly in the dusk of a dull race contributes nothing of its ess