have not as yet found out the fatal secret of Good and Evil—­they have not as yet eaten the forbidden fruit.  But, on the contrary, look into the faces of the degenerates and fallen souls of our civilized life.  See the furtive glance and the self-consciousness of “Wrong” evident in every face.  And this consciousness of “Wrong” bears heavily upon these people—­it is heavier than the punishments heaped upon them That nameless something called “conscience” may be smothered for a while, but sooner or later it comes to light and demands the pound of flesh from its victim.

And yet you will say that it seems hard to think that the same thing can be Right in one person and Wrong in another.  This seems like a hard saying and a dangerous doctrine, but it is the Truth.  And man instinctively recognizes it.  He does not expect the same sense of moral responsibility in a young child, or in a savage, that he does in a mature, developed, civilized man.  He may restrain the child and the savage, for self-protection and the welfare of all, but he realizes the distinction, or at least should do so.  And not only is this true, but as man advances in the scale he casts off many ideas of “Wrong” that he once held, having outgrown the old ideas and having grown into new conceptions.  And the tendency is always upward and onward.  The tendency is constantly from Force and Restraint toward Love and Freedom.  The ideal condition would be one in which there were no laws and no necessity for them—­a condition in which men had ceased to do wrong because they had outgrown the desire rather than from fear or restraint or force.  And while this condition as yet seems afar off, there is constantly going on an unfoldment of higher planes and faculties of the mind, which when once fully manifest in the race will work a complete revolution in ethics and laws and government—­and for the better, of course.  In the meantime Mankind moves along, doing the best it can, making a steady though slow progress.

There is another plane of the mind which is often called the “Instinct,” but which is but a part of the plane of the Intellect, although its operations are largely below the field of consciousness.  We allude to what may be called the “Habit Mind,” in order to distinguish it from the Instinctive Plane.  The difference is this:  The Instinctive plane of mind is made up of the ordinary operations of the mind below the plane of the Intellect, and yet above the plane of the Vegetative mind—­and also of the acquired experiences of the race, which have been transmitted by heredity, etc.  But the “Habit Mind” contains only that which has been placed there by the person himself and which he has acquired by experience, habit, and observation, repeated so often until the mind knows it so well that it is carried below the field of consciousness and becomes “second nature,” and akin to Instinct.