KOSMICOS. Pray tell me why it is not just as rational to conclude that these moral phenomena, as results of the human passion of love, have become, in all their complex and diversified aspects, the consequences of a progressive elevation of the human animal to a higher plane of existence than that occupied by the inferior species, or than that occupied by the primeval man. When man had become developed into an animal in whom the intellect could become what it is, he could begin to perceive the social utility of certain modes of life, and from this idea of their utility would result certain maxims of conduct which would be acted on as moral obligations. Thus, commencing with a consciousness that the race exists with the sexual division into male and female, there would begin to be formed some ideas of the superior social utility of a regulated sexual union of individuals and of permanent marriages. These ideas would become refined as the progressive elevation of the race went on, and that which we recognize as the sentimental element in the passion of love would become developed out of the perceptions of a superior utility in the permanent devotion and consecration of two individuals to each other. If, then, by a moral purpose in the establishment of the bisexual division you mean that all these social phenomena of the family, the tribe, and the nation were designed in the human race to follow from that division, I see no necessity for resorting to any such moral purpose on the part of a creator, because they might just as well have followed from the progressive elevation and development of the human animal, supposing him to be descended from some pre-existing type of animal of another and inferior organization. The philosophy which you seem to be cultivating closely resembles that which ascribes everything to the action of mind as its cause. This, you must be aware, it is the tendency of modern science to antagonize by a different view of causation. What have you been reading, that you adhere so pertinaciously to the idea of a moral purpose adopted by some being, overlooking those physical causes which may have produced all the results without that hypothesis?