implied, largely accepted as it has been, I cannot help thinking is
really traceable to an oversight. If in action there were only one
factor, that is to say, the motive, the action would seem to be
necessary and to be traceable in its origin apparently back to the
nebula. But surely there are two factors, the motive and the volition.
Of the second factor in actions which are matters of course we are not
conscious; where there is a conflict of motives or hesitation of any
kind, we are. Huxley at one time held that man was an automaton. I
believe my illustrious friend afterward receded from that position.
Yet on the necessarian theory automatons we must apparently be.

February 10th, 1907.

IV.

THE LIMIT OF EVOLUTION.

Your last correspondent on the subject of my letters treats the
question lightly. Perhaps he is young, enjoying the morning of life
and thinking little of its close. On the mind of a student of history
is deeply impressed the sadness of its page; the record of infinite
misery and suffering as well as depravity, all apparently to no purpose
if the end is to be a physical catastrophe. Comtism, while it bids us
devote and sacrifice ourselves to the future of humanity, can
apparently hold out nothing more.

I accept evolution, if it is the verdict of science as to the origin of
physical species, the human species included; though it certainly seems
strange that, the chances being so numerous as they are, no distinct
ease of evolution should have taken place within our ken. But the
theory apparently does not pretend to account for the development of
man's higher nature. That there is a gap in the continuity of
development or any supernatural intervention has never been suggested
by me; but it does appear that there is an ascent such as constitutes
an essential difference and calls for other than physical explanation.

In matter, said Tyndall, is the potentiality of all life. Matter is
what we discern by our bodily senses. What assurance have we that the
account of the universe and of our relations to it given us by our
bodily senses is exhaustive, or that the moral conscience may not have
another source?

Apart from anything more distinctly spiritual, where do we get the
faculty of idealization? Is it traceable to physical sense?

Unless the moral conscience has a source higher than mere physical
evolution, what is to deter a man in whom criminal propensities are
strong from ind