From the earliest times, the political philosophy of the people of
America was directly connected with the religious and political
philosophy of the Reformation. The essence of that philosophy was that
man was essentially a spiritual being; that each man was the direct
and immediate creature of a personal God, who was the First Cause;
that each man as such a spiritual creature was in direct and immediate
relationship with God, as his Creator; that between men, as spiritual
creatures, there was no possibility of comparison by the human mind,
the divine spark which is the soul being an essence incapable of
measurement and containing possibilities of growth, and perhaps of
deterioration, known only to God; that therefore all men, as
essentially spiritual beings, were equal in the sight of all other
men. Luther and Calvin narrowed this philosophy by assuming that this
spiritual nature and this equality were properties only of professing
Christians, but Fox, followed by Perm, enlarged and universalized it
by treating the Christian doctrine as declaratory of a universal
truth. Penn's doctrine of the universal "inner light," which was in
every man from the beginning of the world and will be to the end, and
which is Christ,--according to which doctrine every human being who
has ever been, who is, or who is to be, is inevitably by virtue of his
humanity, a spiritual being, the creature of God, and, as directly
and immediately related spiritually to Him, the equal of every other
man,--marked the completion of the Reformation.

According to this theory, the life of animals, who, being created
unequal, are from birth to death engaged in a struggle for existence
in which the fittest survives, is eternally and universally
differentiated by a wide and deep chasm from the life of men, who,
being created equal, are engaged in a struggle against the
deteriorating forces of the universe in which each helps each and all