It is a conceivable thing that man may learn to create his food from the elements without the slow processes of agriculture; it is conceivable that he may master the bacteria which at present prey upon his body, and so put an end to death.  It is certain that he will ascertain the laws of heredity, and create human qualities as he has created the spurs of the fighting-cock and the legs of the greyhound.  He will find out what genius is, and the laws of its being, and the tests whereby it may be recognized.  In the new science of psycho-analysis he has already begun the work of bringing an infinity of subconsciousness into the light of day; it may be that in the evidence of telepathy which the psychic researchers are accumulating, he is beginning to grope his way into a universal consciousness, which may come to include the joys and griefs of the inhabitants of Mars, and of the dark stars which the spectroscope and the telescope are disclosing.

All these are fascinating possibilities.  What stands in the way of their realization?  Ignorance and superstition, fear and submission, the old habits of rapine and hatred which man has brought with him from his animal past.  These make him a slave, a victim of himself and of others; to root them out of the garden of the soul is the task of the modern thinker.

The new morality is thus a morality of freedom.  It teaches that man is the master, or shall become so; that there is no law, save the law of his own being, no check upon his will save that which he himself imposes.

The new morality is a morality of joy.  It teaches that true pleasure is the end of being, and the test of all righteousness.

The new morality is a morality of reason.  It teaches that there is no authority above reason; no possibility of such authority, because if such were to appear, reason would have to judge it, and accept or reject it.

The new morality is a morality of development.  It teaches that there can no more be an immutable law of conduct, than there can be an immutable position for the steering-wheel of an aeroplane.  The business of the pilot of an aeroplane is to keep his machine aloft amid shifting currents of wind.  The business of a moralist is to adjust life to a constantly changing environment.  An action which was suicide yesterday becomes heroism today, and futility or hypocrisy tomorrow.

This new morality, like all things in a world of strife, is fighting for existence, using its own weapons, which are reason and love.  Obviously it can use no others, without self-destruction; yet it has to meet enemies who fight with the old weapons of force and fraud.  Whether it will prevail is more than any prophet can say.  Perhaps it is too much to ask that it should succeed—­this insolent effort of the pigmy man to leap upon the back of his master and fit a bridle into his mouth.  Perhaps it is nothing but a dream in the minds of a few, the scientists and poets and inventors, the dreamers of the race.  Perhaps the nerve of the pigmy will fail him at the critical moment, and he will fall from the back of his master, and under his master’s hoofs.