Fortunately nature is so organized as to keep the consequences of ill-doing ever before man’s eyes.  Disobeying the law of fire man is burned; disobeying the law of steam man is scalded; disobeying the law of honor friends avert their faces, or the door of the jail closes behind the wrongdoer.  So few are these laws and so simple that they could not be plainer were they emblazoned upon the sky as an ever-present scroll.  There is the law of reverence.  Conscious of vastness and sublimity, in the presence of mountains, man, frail, ignorant, passing swiftly to his grave, is asked to bow his head in the presence of the Eternal One.

There is also the law of truth in speech, the law of purity in thought, the laws that forbid theft and covetousness and killing.  But all these laws are gathered up and fulfilled in love, just as the seven colors of nature are gathered up and fulfilled in the one white sunbeam.  And he who loves will fulfill all these laws.  Loving himself, man will not waste his physical treasure.  As it was vandalism for the iconoclasts to pass through the cathedrals of Europe whitewashing the frescoes and breaking down the statues, much more is it vandalism for men to destroy that temple of God called the body.  If man loves his mind he will, through culture, lead what is germinal and latent forth into full blossom and fruitage.  He who loves scholarship will make haste to double the books in his library.  He who loves sweetness will double the sweetness of his melody.  He who loves friends will double their number and strengthen their affection.  He who loves industry will strengthen his toil and lend it influence.  Looking toward the home, love fulfills the law of helpfulness.  Looking toward the weak and poor, love fulfills the law of service and sympathy.  Looking toward a great crisis for humanity, love fulfills the law of martyrdom.

Just as summer fulfills all ripeness and growth for seed and root and tree, so love fulfills all laws for self and man and the all-loving God.

After thirty-six years of tireless toil Herbert Spencer has brought to a conclusion the labors of a lifetime.  His final volume places the capstone on the structure of his philosophy.  In reading these pages no thoughtful mind can fail to perceive that for science also has dawned the vision splendid.  If history began with an era of force, its last and crowning achievement will be the era when love, organized into laws and institutions, will lend perfection to civilization.  The upward march of mankind has been slow and accompanied by tremendous losses.  At the beginning strength prevailed and weakness went to the wall; the bird with the swiftest wing first reached the fountain, the deer with the swiftest foot reached the place of shelter, the ox with the strongest thrust reached the richest fodder.  Pushed back, weakness perished, while strength prevailed and propagated.