ind, and as the result we have civilized man as
contrasted with the anthropoid ape. And the end is not yet. The era of
war in man's development is near its close, and a new era of peace,
under conditions of advanced mental and physical activity, seems about
to begin. Its outcome no man can predict, but it may far surpass in
beneficial results all that has gone before, and carry man upward to an
extraordinarily elevated mental plane.

XII

THE EVOLUTION OF MORALITY

The evolution of man from his animal ancestry has been a composite
phenomenon, one by no means confined to the physical and intellectual
conditions which we have so far considered, but embracing also features
of moral and spiritual progress. The origin and growth of these need
also to be reviewed, if we would present a fully rounded sketch of human
evolution. So far as his physical form is concerned, man became
practically completed ages ago, as the supreme effort of nature in the
moulding and vitalizing of matter. When the arena of the struggle for
existence became transferred from the body to the mind, variation in the
body, once so active, rapidly declined; and with the full employment of
the intellect in the conflict with nature, physical evolution ceased,
except in minor particulars, and the organic structure of man became
practically fixed. The human animal, therefore, as a physical species,
has reached a stage of permanence. And this may be regarded as the
supreme result of material evolution in animals; or at least it may be
affirmed that, while man continues to exist, no member of the lower
animal tribes can possibly develop to become his rival.

But though man is not markedly distinct as a physical species from his
anthropoid ancestor, the process of evolution has not ceased, but has
gone on in him rapidly and immensely. The strain has simply been
transferred from the body to the mind, and to the extent that the mental
characteristics are more flexible and yield more readily to formative
influences, the mind has surpassed the body in rapidity of evolutionary
variation. Within a period during which the lower animals have remained
almost unchanged, man has varied enormously in mental conditions, and
to-day may be looked upon, not merely as a distinct species, but
practically as a new order, or class, of animals, as far removed
intellectually from the mammals below him as they are from the insects
or mollusks.

If now we turn from the phy