42   HISTORIC GROWTH OF MAN.

MATURITY OF THE RACE.   43

whenever science has touched the great problems of life, spiritual truth, or government, then the church has pronounced her bitter anathemas. Or, she has resorted to the thumb-screw and the stake. In all this the church has gone square against the plain and strong words of the prophets and of Christ. We shall speak more of this mistake in our seventh chapter. We shall there consider the actual relation that science holds to religion.

The great lesson of geology is this-that through all the many species of vertebrates, from the fish up to man, the spinal cord and lower parts of the nervous system steadily diminished in size and importance, while the brain quite as steadily increased in relative size and perfection of structure.

This all-sweeping law must also apply to the brain itself when we compare its lower with its higher parts. It must determine the successive development of its organs from the base to the top, as illustrated in the phases of personal life. The ultimate rule of the higher faculties of the brain is thus secured by a law as extensive in its sway as the existence of organic life itself. No hand of conservatism can turn back that upward march of humanity.

Not only does the brain of man greatly predominate over all other parts of his nervous system, but the other organs of his body, especially his limbs, have become modified so as to be in harmony with this advance in brain structure. and volume. In man alone of all animals the arms or front limbs are entirely relieved from the duty of locomotion and are devoted wholly to the service of the head. Man alone has a real hand, with each one of the fingers

opposable to the thumb. Upon this structure and form of the hand depends the possibility of all works of art and skill.

Whatever may be the functions of the top brain, these well-proved laws of science assure us that these functions must rule in the future of national life, in the political conduct of men, no less than in that of the individual members of society. It therefore becomes a question of importance: What are these faculties of the upper brain? They are those that lead to science, inspiration, culture, philanthropy, religion, justice, devotion, love, stability, aspiration, self-control and civil order. They are faculties that by universal consent occupy the highest place in the estimation of civilized men.

MATURITY OF THE RACE. In Europe and Amer

ica, in China and India, the nations have passed through the phases of national childhood and youth. They have entered the great phase of maturity. We therefore have the supreme warrant of science in affirming that new institutions will be formed in which the guiding hand of science will determine the plans, the methods of action, and the forms of structure.

In the phases of youth it was the faculties of memory, it was human experience and history, that guided the statesmen and kings. That was the best light they had. But in the phase of maturity the higher faculties of reason, with their product, science, become the guiding light. And science means exact knowledge, such as all can understand alike. Science can always count and measure.

Whatever a nation does, is the work of its component