Now it is because of this _interval_ between the highest and lowest degrees of completeness of living that are compatible with the mere maintenance of life, that men can be distinguished as morally bad or morally good. In inferior animals, where there is no such interval, there is no developed morality or conscience, though in a few of the higher ones there are the germs of these things. Morality comes upon the scene when there is an alternative offered of leading better lives or worse lives. And just as up to this point the actions of the forefathers of mankind have been determined by the pursuit of pleasure and avoidance of pain, so now they begin to be practically determined by the pursuit of goodness and avoidance of evil. This rise from a bestial to a moral plane of existence involves the acquirement of the knowledge of good and evil. Conscience is generated to play a part analogous to that played by the sense of pain in the lower stages of life, and to keep us from wrong doing. To the mere love of life, which is the conservative force that keeps the whole animal world in existence, there now comes gradually to be superadded the feeling of religious aspiration, which is nothing more nor less than the yearning after the highest possible completeness of spiritual life. In the lower stages of human development this religious aspiration has as yet but an embryonic existence, and moral obligations are still but imperfectly recognized. It is only after long ages of social discipline, fraught with cruel afflictions and grinding misery, that the moral law becomes dominant and religious aspiration intense and abiding in the soul. When such a stage is reached, we have at last in man a creature different in kind from his predecessors, and fit for an everlasting life of progress, for a closer and closer communion with God in beatitude that shall endure. FOOTNOTES: [2] Biology, i. 454. [Illustration] X _The Relativity of Evil_