Our views of the object of life have to be framed so as not to be inconsistent with the observed facts from which these various possibilities are inferred; it is safer that they should not exclude the possibilities themselves.  We must look on the slow progress of the order of evolution, and the system of routine by which it has thus far advanced, as due to antecedents and to inherent conditions of which we have not as yet the slightest conception.  It is difficult to withstand a suspicion that the three dimensions of space and the fourth dimension of time may be four independent variables of a system that is neither space nor time, but something else wholly unconceived by us.  Our present enigma as to how a First Cause could itself have been brought into existence—­how the tortoise of the fable, that bears the elephant that bears the world, is itself supported,—­may be wholly due to our necessary mistranslation of the four or more variables of the universe, limited by inherent conditions, into the three unlimited variables of Space and the one of Time.

Our ignorance of the goal and purport of human life, and the mistrust we are apt to feel of the guidance of the spiritual sense, on account of its proved readiness to accept illusions as realities, warn us against deductive theories of conduct.  Putting these, then, at least for the moment, to one side, we find ourselves face to face with two great and indisputable facts that everywhere force themselves on the attention and compel consideration.  The one is that the whole of the living world moves steadily and continuously towards the evolution of races that are progressively more and more adapted to their complicated mutual needs and to their external circumstances.  The other is that the process of evolution has been hitherto apparently carried out with, what we should reckon in our ways of carrying out projects, great waste of opportunity and of life, and with little if any consideration for individual mischance.  Measured by our criterion of intelligence and mercy, which consists in the achievement of result without waste of time or opportunity, without unnecessary pain, and with equitable allowance for pure mistake, the process of evolution on this earth, so far as we can judge, has been carried out neither with intelligence nor ruth, but entirely through the routine of various sequences, commonly called “laws,” established or necessitated we know not how.

An incalculable amount of lower life has been certainly passed through before that human organisation was attained, of which we and our generation are for the time the holders and transmitters.  This is no mean heritage, and I think it should be considered as a sacred trust, for, together with man, intelligence of a sufficiently high order to produce great results appears, so far as we can infer from the varied records of the prehistoric past, to have first dawned upon the tenantry of the earth.  Man has already shown