clear distinction between evolution as applied to the body and as
applied to the spirit. In lucid and luminous pages he has taught us that
evolution, as a physical process, having culminated in man can go no
further along those lines; that henceforward "the Cosmic force" will be
expended in the perfection of the spirit, and that that process will
require eternity to complete.

More perspicuously than any other author, John Fiske has introduced to
modern English thought the conception of the ascent of the soul,
considered in its relation to the individual and to the race.

This subject naturally divides itself into two departments, viz.--the
ascent of each individual soul and, then, the far-off perfecting of
humanity. I shall make suggestions along both lines of inquiry. I do not
know of any writer who has, in a compact form, presented the results of
such studies, although there have been illustrations, especially in
literature, which indicate that many thinkers have had in mind the
attempt to trace and describe the progress of the soul from its bondage
to animalism toward its perfection and glory in the freedom of the
spirit.

Goethe, in "Faust," has made an effort to follow the process by which a
weak woman and a weaker man, ignorant of the forces struggling within
them and susceptible to malign influences from without, through
terrible mistakes and bitter failure, at length reach the heights of
character.

The Trilogy of Dante is a study of the soul in its slow and painful
passage from hell, through purgatory, to heaven. Perhaps, however, the
noblest and truest effort in this direction to be found in the world's