pite of everything, moral feeling was never higher at any time in
Western social history than it is at present. The changes of thought have
indeed been very great, but the moral experience of mankind remains
exactly as valuable as it was before, and new perceptions of that value
have been given to us by the new philosophy.

It has been wisely observed by the greatest of modern thinkers that
mankind has progressed more rapidly in every other respect than in
morality. Moral progress has not been rapid simply because the moral ideal
has always been kept a little in advance of the humanly possible.
Thousands of years ago the principles of morality were exactly the same as
those which rule our lives to-day. We can not improve upon them; we can
not even improve upon the language which expressed them. The most learned
of our poets could not make a more beautiful prayer than the prayer which
Egyptian mothers taught to their little children in ages when all Europe
was still a land of savages. The best of the moral philosophy of the
nineteenth century is very little of improvement upon the moral philosophy
of ancient India or China. If there is any improvement at all, it is
simply in the direction of knowledge of causes and effects. And that is
why in all countries the common sense of mankind universally condemns any
attempt to interfere with moral ideas. These represent the social
experience of man for thousands and thousands of years; and it is not
likely that the wisdom of any one individual can ever better them. If
bettered at all it can not be through theory. The amelioration must be
effected by future experience of a universal kind. We may improve every
branch of science, every branch of art, everything else relating to the
work of human heads and hands; but we can not improve morals by invention
or by hypothesis. Morals are not made, but grow.

Yet, as I have said, there is what may be called a new system of ethics.
But this new system of ethics means nothing more than a new way of
understanding the old system of ethics. By the application of evolutional
science to the study of morals, we have been enabled to trace back the
whole history of moral ideas to the time of their earliest inception,--to
understand the reasons of them, and to explain them without the help of
any supernatural theory. And the result, so far from diminishing our
respect for the wisdom of our ancestors, has immensely increased that
respect. There is n