Most valuable of all, to our so long religiously moulded minds, is the effect of this recognition of the nature of society upon Ethics. Vague indeed, complicated, mystical, difficult to understand, have been our gropings after this great science. Ethics is the Science of Social Relation; it could never be understood by individualists. There is no ethics for an individual except to maintain, improve, and reproduce himself. A consistent and remorseless egoism is right for the individual animal; through it he fulfils the law of his being; through it he improves his race. So we, wishing to improve a breed of cattle, consistently and remorselessly select and train and breed from preferred individuals, neglecting or destroying the inferior ones. So do mistaken men, not appreciating the nature of society, urge a similar stern stirpiculture upon us, and would have us neglect or destroy our defective members and breed only from the best. But when we have a social animal to deal with, as the bee, different laws operate, or, rather, the same laws on a larger scale, a higher plane. It is the best swarm now to be selected; and the value of the swarm depends not so much upon the size and vigour of its individual constituents as on _how they work together_. There is ethics in a hive, laws of collective behaviour. There is ethics in Society, because it is a collective unit. Ethics, to Society, is what physics is to matter; ethics is the physics of social relation. Physical law holds material constituents together in those combinations and relations which make the material bodies we know. Ethical law holds social constituents together in those relations which make the social bodies we know. But we, not knowing the social body, could not know its laws. We have striven in vain to predicate ethics of individuals. You “ought” to do so? Why “ought” I? Because it is “right.” What is “right”? Whatever God said. And what did God say? What these ancient gentlemen have written in their ancient times. And if I do not believe what the ancient gentlemen wrote? There is no answer to this except the somewhat fatuous one of “so much the worse for you!” The writings of the ancient gentlemen were not susceptible of proof. Then came Christ, talking sense. He grasped the nature of Society and preached its laws. Ye are all members of one body and of one another. You shall love your neighbour as yourself; that is, recognise him as really part of what you are part of—all one self; and the love of self becomes mutual love as we see what Self is to a Human Creature—Our Self. Christ saw and said all this, and did it, which is more; lived,—as far as one individual could,—true to his social relation, faithfully fulfilling his function to that great living thing, though its immediately surrounding constituents very naturally killed him.