The moral imperative is found to be firstly extrinsic in social pressure, and secondly intrinsic in altruistic sympathy. These are the only authorities competent to say: "Thus shalt thou do, and thus shalt thou not do." Evolution establishes no absolute morality. It is always relative to the surroundings, and it differs according to the stage of civilization. The more nearly the conduct approaches the relatively perfect the more truly ideal is it. The imagined ideal is not so perfect as the relatively perfect. According as a necessity is universal, so is the degree of moral enforcement which accompanies it, and the degree of accord in the recognition of its imperativeness. The sanctity of life, the condemnation of these who infringe it, the commendation of those who promote it are of first eminence. Liberty, Property, and other essentials receive little less recognition; and so on by degrees down to the small details of everyday life. The kind of moral imperative is the same throughout, the degree of enforcement differing according to the varying importance of the actions. As this point very properly comes in the Evolutionist's view of religion. We take, as our text on this subject, the speech by Professor Fiske at the Spencer banquet held in New York, November 9th, 1882, and since published in the form of a tractette.[15] Professor Fiske here pursues Mr. Spencer's faulty plan of generalising all religions, and assuming the common or fundamental content as a true finding, besides holding that the fundamental truths of science are identical with this final deliverance of religion. It is not that Professor Fiske's argument is bad, but that it is badly put. If we confine ourselves to the scientific view, and say that the universe manifests an orderly development; that it is probably altogether the result of the relations of primordial factors; but that of these we can form no adequate conception although, nevertheless, they undoubtedly contained something of the elements of a subjective nature--then we do not transgress the scientific view. Neither do we so transgress when, by inductions from the history of man, we assert that the law of development of the subjective is towards altruistic sympathy, quantitative increase of life, and social harmony or equilibration. Mr. Matthew Arnold's recognition of "an eternal power, not ourselves, that makes for righteousness" is as near an approach to the truth as we can get. Mr. Spencer's formula should be "an unknowable power, not ourselves, that makes towards equilibrium." The question, thereupon arises, Is the subjective a factor in a process of equilibration, and is righteousness subjective equilibration? The question also arises in the latter case, Is the "makes for" or "makes towards" a teleological aiming at an end, or a process determined completely by antecedent factors of which it is but the outcome?