If he refused to help others, they would refuse to help him.
This was his first, very rude lesson in rights and duties. Love,
duty, and right have ever since been the watchwords of his
development and progress. We have not yet considered, and must for
the present disregard, the value and efficiency of religion in
aiding his advance. At present we emphasize only the historical
fact that man has not become what he is by a higher development of
the body, nor by giving free rein to appetite, nor yet by making the
dictates of selfish prudence supreme. And if there is any such thing
as continuity in history, such modes and aims of life, if now
followed, would surely only brutalize him and plunge him headlong in
degeneration. He must live for right, truth, love, and duty. In just
so far as he makes any other aim in life supreme, or allows it to
even rival these, he is sinking into brutality. This is the clear,
unmistakable verdict of history, and we shall do well to heed it.
But granting all that can be claimed for this sequence, have not the
lower forms whose anatomy we have sketched--worm, fish, and
bird--halted at various points along this line of march? Yet they
have evidently survived. And if they have found safe resting-places,
cannot higher forms turn back and join them? In other words, is not
degeneration easier than advance and just as safe? What is the
result if an animal tries to return to a lower plane of life or
refuses to take the next upward step? Generally extermination.
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