law of conservation of energy?" In all lower nature both living and dead force changes its form, but the sum of force remains eternally the same. It may seem to disappear, but really only changes from the visible to the invisible form, from the palpable to the impalpable. It disappears as molar motion, but only to reappear in equal amount as molecular motion. The whole sum of energy, like the whole sum of matter, amid all its changes remains eternally constant. Organic matter and organic forces are no exception to this law. Animals and plants in death refund both their matter and their forces to the common stock of matter and force. The same matter and force may be retaken and refunded by many successive generations. Thus the same matter and force has passed, by eternal circulation, through different forms thousands, probably millions, of times in the history of the earth. There is a universal law of circulation, of flux and reflux, which includes both matter and force, and both dead and living forces. But if man be immortal we must have in him an exception to this law. His body is indeed returned, his vital forces may be refunded, but his spirit, on this view, retains forever its personality. Therefore every man dying carries away just so much from the sum of natural energy. Therefore, there is a constant drafting on the bank of natural forces, and no refunding. Will not this eventually bankrupt nature? Yes, I answer; but what a glorious bankruptcy! Material forces gradually exhausted disappear as material forces, only to reappear embodied as spiritual individuals. The law of conservation of energy is not violated, the sum of energy is not diminished, but only the sum of circulating, material, natural energy, diminished because passed into fixed eternal-i.e., spiritual conditions.

Bankrupt nature! Yes; but do not all scientific speculations, on the subject of the final destiny of the cosmos, bankrupt nature? Is not the final result, according to all such speculations, the running down of all forms of force into heat and the final equal diffusion of this heat, and so the final death of the cosmos? Is not this the necessary final result according to the doctrine of the dissipation of energy? But according to our view, this event, though inevitable, does not take place until, by the very process, much if not all natural forces shall be raised

little by little and separated as embodied forms of spiritual intelligences; until there exists only a moral and spiritual cosmos, with love or spiritual attraction as its universal law, as gravitation is now of the material cosmos.' Thus the material cosmos becomes first a womb and then a nursery for the spiritual children of God, and having served its purpose disappears. Nature becomes first a gestating and then a nursing mother of man in a far deeper and more literal sense than is usually supposed. This, then, is the end, the object, the whole significance of the material cosmos. What other significance so noble, so worthy of God? Yea, what other significance, I might ask, is possible or conceivable as at all worthy of Him and of the past eternity of His preparation?

JOSEPH LE CONTE.

'I have shown in my article on correlation of vital with physical and chemical forces (of which, in fact, it constitutes the central idea) that for every portion of matter and force raised to a higher level there is a corresponding running down of another portion to a lower level. These are invariable correlatives, and probably stand in the relation of cause and effect. It is as if the running down generated the lifting force. Is it not possible then that the doctrine of the running down and dissipation of energy is the correlative of the doctrine of immortality?

THE DUTIES OF HIGHER TOWARDS LOWER RACES IN A MIXED COMMUNITY.

IN approaching the

N approaching the question of the duties owed by higher to lower races in a mixed community, it is necessary, first of all, to enter upon the consideration of another, a very deep and recondite one-that, namely, of the original unity or non-unity of the human race, a subject on which much variety of opinion. exists among recent thinkers. Clearly, if "mankind" is only a convenient word, under which races quite distinct in origin, and essentially different in their physical and moral natures, may be grouped, the duties of race to race will be quite other from those which would obtain under the condition of an original essential unity. Some duties are owed by a being such as man to every creature capable of feeling pleasure and pain; but the extent and character of the duties necessarily vary according to the degree of community existing between the creature and him. Man may kill for his own advantage, safety, or convenience, any number of the mere animal creation; he may without blame exterminate or enslave them; he may subject them to much pain and suffering even for a problematic benefit; but such treatment of his own species would be condemned and pronounced inhuman by almost any moralist.

The case may be rendered clearer by one or two illustrations. The voyagers who in remote times explored the unknown regions of the earth found a difficulty in determining exactly where humanity ended and mere animal nature began. They did not know whether they ought to account the larger tribes of the quadrumana to be monkeys or men. On the whole, they inclined rather to the human theory. But their civilization

being imperfect, and their ethical code faulty, they proceeded to deal with the tribes in question in a way which, under their theory, was wrong. "At the bottom of this bay," says one, "lay an island like the former, having a lake, and in this lake a second island, full of wild people. Far the greater proportion were women, whose bodies were covered with hair, and whom our interpreters called Gorilla. Though we pursued the men, we could not catch any of them, since all fled from us, escaping over the precipices, and defending themselves with stones. However, we took three women; but they attacked their conductors with their hands and teeth, and could not be prevailed on to accompany us. We therefore killed and flayed them, and brought their skins with us to Carthage." This narrative revolts our feelings, not on account of what the voyagers did, which was merely to provide the Carthaginian Museum with the material for a few stuffed pongos or gorillas, but from the assumption made that the pongos were and "women," and that, being such, it was lawful to treat them as they were treated by their captors.

1

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At a much later date, in Christian times, and among men calling themselves Christians, we find practices prevailing similar to those of the Carthaginian explorers, but with the difference that the objects of them are human beings, in the ordinary sense of the words. On the first arrival of bloodhounds in St. Domingo, the planters who had sent for them, and who wished to test their ferocity, "delivered over to them, by way of trial, the first negro on whom they could lay their hands. The dogs devoured him with much promptitude, to the great satisfaction of their owners," whom the moral indignation of the historian designates as "white tigers in the form of men. Probably the planters would have justified themselves by denying that the negroes were men in the true sense of the word, and would have indignantly rejected the notion. that they were beings of the same blood with themselves, with the same capacities, the same feelings, and the same natural rights.

2

'Hanno, "Periplus," pp. 13, 14.

2 Grégoire," Sur la Littérature des Nègres."

The inquiry, whether all men are of the same race or no, may be treated in two ways: either from the standpoint that Holy Scripture is of divine origin and so authoritative; or, without any such assumption, upon a mere human and scientific basis. As the authority of Scripture is not universally admitted among the educated classes, either in America or in Europe, it seems desirable to include in the present paper both lines of argument. The question of the proper treatment of lower races by higher ones is a matter in which all men, whether Christians or not, are interested; and one on which we may assume that all men would wish, if they could only see their duty, to carry it out.

It will scarcely be denied that Scripture, in its primâ-facie aspect, teaches the original unity of mankind, or, in other words, the derivation from a single pair of all the men and women upon the face of the earth. It is not a divine, but a philosopher, who lays it down, in the most positive and precise terms, that" the Sacred Scriptures declare that it pleased the Almighty Creator to make of one blood all the nations of the earth, and that all mankind are the offspring of common parents. And it is admitted on all hands that the almost universal opinion in all ages has been that this is the teaching of Scripture. But recently the view has been broached, and maintained with much ability,' that the almost universal opinion is erroneous; that the passages of Scripture usually thought to indicate the origination of all mankind from a single pair need not be understood in this sense; and that there are other passages which sufficiently indicate the existence of human beings in the early times outside the circle of the "Adamites," or descendants of Adam and Eve, and which therefore teach, at least, a dual origin of mankind, whom the supporters of the view consequently divided into "the Adamites" and "the nonAdamites." The "non-Adamites" are thought to have survived the Flood, and to constitute a large portion of the existing inhabitants of the earth; the "Adamites," who are identified

1

Prichard, "Natural History of Man," p. 5.

2 See a work entitled "The Genesis of the Earth and of Man," by an anony. mous author, edited by Mr. Reginald Stuart Poole, of the British Museum.