e they flesh or spirit; are they living or
dead?

If this is really a scientific question, if it is a question not of
moral philosophy only, but of biology, we are compelled to repudiate
beauty as the criterion of spirituality. It is not, of course, meant by
this that spirituality is not morally beautiful. Spirituality must be
morally very beautiful--so much so that popularly one is justified in
judging of religion by its beauty. Nor is it meant that morality is not
_a_ criterion. All that is contended for is that, from the scientific
standpoint, it is not _the_ criterion. We can judge of the crystal and
the shell from many other standpoints besides those named, each
classification having an importance in its own sphere. Thus we might
class them according to their size and weight, their percentage of
silica, their use in the arts, or their commercial value. Each science
or art is entitled to regard them from its own point of view; and when
the biologist announces his classification he does not interfere with
those based on other grounds. Only, having chosen his standpoint, he is
bound to frame his classification in terms of it.

It may be well to state emphatically, that in proposing a new
classification--or rather, in reviving the primitive one--in the
spiritual sphere we leave untouched, as of supreme value in its own
province, the test of morality. Morality is certainly a test of
religion--for most practical purposes the very best test. And so far
from tending to depreciate morality, the bringing into prominence of the
true basis is entirely in its interests--in the interests of a moral
beauty, indeed, infinitely surpassing the highest attainable perfection
on merely natural lines.

The warrant for seeking a further classification is twofold. It is a
principle in science that classification should rest on the most basal
characteristics. To determine what these are may not always be easy, but
it is at least evident that a classification framed on the ultimate
nature of organisms must be more distinctive than one based on external
characters. Before the principles of classification were understood,
organisms were invariably arranged according to some merely external
resemblance. Thus plants were classed according to size as Herbs,
Shrubs, and Trees; and animals according to their appearance as Birds,
Beasts, and Fishes. The Bat upon this principle was a bird, the Whale a
fish; and so thoroughly artificial were these