Of all the isms of the day altruism is far the noblest and most promising. In this opponent of selfism, this regard for the rights and happiness of others equally with our own, we find the link which binds together the two halves of the moral principle. The love sentiment on the one hand, the sense of duty on the other, meet and combine in the zeal of altruism, for which a truly developed conscience is merely another term. Those who have the good of others strongly at heart, who are truly Christian in a practical realization of the brotherhood of mankind, can safely be set free from all the reins of law, and trusted to do the right thing from innate feeling instead of outside compulsion. And, trusting in the future full development of the altruistic sentiment, we can hopefully look forward to a time in which the moral law will exist alone, conscience become the controlling force in human actions, and government let fall the whip which it has so long held in threat over the shrinking back of man. XIII MAN'S RELATION TO THE SPIRITUAL The purpose of this work has been to trace the evolutionary origin of man, in his ascent from the lower animal world to his full stature as the physical and intellectual monarch of the kingdom of life. But to round up the story of human evolution it seemed necessary to consider man from the moral standpoint, and it now appears equally desirable to review his relations to the spiritual element of the universe. Having dealt with the development of man as a mortal being, we have now to regard him as a possibly immortal being. This outlook into the supreme domain of nature lifts us, for the first time in our work, definitely above the lower world of life. There is nothing to show that the animals below man have any conception of the spiritual. It is true that there are various statements on record which seem to indicate in some animals, the horse and the dog, for instance, a dread of unseen powers, a recognition of some element in nature which is invisible to the eyes of man. But what these facts indicate, what influences affect the rudimentary intellect of these animals in such instances, no one is able to say. Though some vague recognition of powers or existences beyond the visible may arise in their narrow minds, it does not probably pass beyond the level of instinct, and doubtless lies almost infinitely below man's conception of the spiritual. In this stage of intellectual development, then, we have to do with a condition which seems to belong solely to man, or has but a germinal existence in the lower organic kingdom.