expression even, of communication between man and man, on the hypothesis of any radical difference in the experience and faculties to which all expression appeals for its intelligibility; neither could there be any system of life in social groups, or plan for education, unless such a common basis is accepted.  The postulate of a common human nature is analogous to that of the unity of matter in science; it finds its complete expression in the doctrine of the brotherhood of man, for if race be fundamentally distinguished from race as was once thought, it is only as element is distinguished from element in the old chemistry.  So, too, the postulate of an order obtaining in the soul, universal and necessary, independent of man’s volition, analogous in all respects to the order of nature, is parallel with that of the constancy of physical law.  A rational life expects this order.  The first knowledge of it comes to us, as that of natural law, by experience; in the social world—­the relations of men to one another—­and in the more important region of our own nature we learn the issue of certain courses of action as well as in the external world; in our own lives and in our dealings with others we come to a knowledge of, and a conformity to, the conditions under which we live, the laws operant in our being, as well as those of the physical world.  Literature assumes this order; in Aeschylus, Cervantes, or Shakspere, it is this that gives their work interest.  Apart from natural science, the whole authority of the past in its entire accumulation of wisdom rests upon the permanence of this order, and its capacity to be known by man; that virtue makes men noble and vice renders them base, is a statement without meaning unless this order is continuous through ages; all principles of action, all schemes of culture, would be uncertain except on this foundation.

So near is this order to us that it was known long before science came to any maturity.  We have added, in truth, little to our knowledge of humanity since the Greeks; and if one wonders why ethics came before science, let him own at least that its priority shows that it is near and vital in life as science is not.  We can do, it seems, without Kepler’s laws, but not without the Decalogue.  The race acquires first what is most needful for life; and man’s heart was always with him, and his fate near.  A second reason, it may be noted, for the later development of science is that our senses, as used by science, are more mental now, and the object itself is observable only by the intervention of the mind through the telescope or microscope or a hundred instruments into which, though physical, the mind enters.  Our methods, too, as well as our instruments, are things of the mind.  It behooves us to remember in an age which science is commonly thought to have materialized, that more and more the mind enters into all results, and fills an ever larger place in life; and this should serve to make materialism seem more