of an order obtaining in the soul, universal and necessary, independent
of man's volition, analogous in all respects to the order of nature, is
parallel with that of the constancy of physical law. A rational life
expects this order. The first knowledge of it comes to us, as that of
natural law, by experience; in the social world--the relations of men to
one another--and in the more important region of our own nature we learn
the issue of certain courses of action as well as in the external world;
in our own lives and in our dealings with others we come to a knowledge
of, and a conformity to, the conditions under which we live, the laws
operant in our being, as well as those of the physical world. Literature
assumes this order; in Aeschylus, Cervantes, or Shakspere, it is this
that gives their work interest. Apart from natural science, the whole
authority of the past in its entire accumulation of wisdom rests upon
the permanence of this order, and its capacity to be known by man; that
virtue makes men noble and vice renders them base, is a statement without
meaning unless this order is continuous through ages; all principles of
action, all schemes of culture, would be uncertain except on this
foundation.

So near is this order to us that it was known long before science came
to any maturity. We have added, in truth, little to our knowledge of
humanity since the Greeks; and if one wonders why ethics came before
science, let him own at least that its priority shows that it is near
and vital in life as science is not. We can do, it seems, without
Kepler's laws, but not without the Decalogue. The race acquires first
what is most needful for life; and man's heart was always with him, and
his fate near. A second reason, it may be noted, for the later
development of science is that our senses, as used by science, are more
mental now, and the object itself is observable only by the intervention
of the mind through the telescope or microscope or a hundred instruments