We have now arrived at a position from which a glimmer of light is thrown upon some of the dark problems connected with the moral government of the world. We can begin to see why misery and wrongdoing are permitted to exist, and why the creative energy advances by such slow and tortuous methods toward the fulfilment of its divine purpose. In order to understand these things, we must ask, What is the ultimate goal of the ethical process? According to the utilitarian philosophy that goal is the completion of human happiness. But this interpretation soon refutes itself. A world of completed happiness might well be a world of quiescence, of stagnation, of automatism, of blankness; the dynamics of evolution would have no place in it. But suppose we say that the ultimate goal of the ethical process is the perfecting of human character? This form of statement contains far more than the other. Consummation of happiness is a natural outcome of the perfecting of character, but that perfecting can be achieved only through struggle, through discipline, through resistance. It is for him that _overcometh_ that the crown of life is reserved. The consummate product of a world of evolution is the character that _creates_ happiness, that is replete with dynamic possibilities of fresh life and activity in directions forever new. Such a character is the reflected image of God, and in it are contained the promise and potency of life everlasting. No such character could be produced by any act of special creation in a garden of Eden. It must be the consummate efflorescence of long ages of evolution, and a world of evolution is necessarily characterized by slow processes, many of which to a looker-on seem like tentative experiments, with an enormous sacrifice of ephemeral forms of life. Thus while the Earth Spirit goes on, unhasting, yet unresting, weaving in the loom of Time the visible garment of God, we begin to see that even what look like failures and blemishes have been from the outset involved in the accomplishment of the all-wise and all-holy purpose, the perfecting of the spiritual Man in the likeness of his Heavenly Father. These points will receive further indirect illustration as we complete our outline sketch of the cosmic process in the past. It is self-evident that in the production of an ethical character, altruistic feelings and impulses must coöperate. Let us look, then, for some of the beginnings of altruism in the course of the evolution of life. [Illustration] XI _Maternity and the Evolution of Altruism_