forces ran their course through history, determining by their ceaseless reactions the order and progress of the world; or when wrongly balanced, its disorder and decay. According to evolutional philosophy, there are three great marks or necessities of all development Aggregation, or the massing of things; Differentiation, or the varying of things; and Integration, or the reuniting of things into higher wholes. All these processes are brought about by sex more perfectly than by any other factor known. From a careful study of this one phenomenon, science could almost decide that progress was the object of Nature, and that Altruism was the object of Progress.

This vital relation between Altruism in its early stages and physiological ends, neither implies that it is to be limited by these ends, nor defined in terms of them. Everything must begin somewhere. And there is no aphorism which the labors of evolution, at each fresh beginning, have tended more consistently to indorse than "first, that which is natural, and then that which is spiritual." How this great saying also appears and reappears with every forward step in evolution, as to the qualitative terms in which higher developments are to be judged, is plain. Because the spiritual to our visions emerges from the natural, or, to speak more accurately, is convoyed upward by the natural for the first stretches of its ascent, it is not necessarily contained in that natural, nor is it to be defined in terms of it.

What comes "First" is not the criterion of what comes last. Few things are more forgotten in criticisms of evolution than that the nature of a thing is not dependent on its origin; that one's whole view of a long, growing and culminating process is not to be governed by the first sight the microscope can catch of it. The processes

of evolution evolve as well as the products; evolve with the products. In the evironments they help to create, or to make available, they find a field for new creations as well as further reinforcements for themselves. With the creation of human children, Altruism found an area for its own expansion such as had never before existed in the world. In this new soil it grew from more to more, and reached a potentiality which enabled it to burst the trammels of physical conditions and overflow the world as a moral force. The mere fact that the first uses of love were physical, shows how perfectly this process bears the stamp of evolution. The later function is seen to relieve the earlier at the moment when it would break down without it, and continue the ascent without a pause.

If it be hinted that Nature has succeeded in continuing the ascent of life in animals without any reinforcement from physical principle, the first answer is that owing to physiological conditions this would not have been possible in the case of man. But even among animals it is not true that Reproduction completes its work apart from higher principles, for even there, there are accompaniments, continually increasing in definiteness, which at least represent the instincts and emotions of man. It is no doubt true that in animal the affections are less voluntarily directed than in the case of a human mother. But in either case, they must have been involuntary at first. It can only have been at a late stage in evolution that Nature could trust even her highest product to carry on the process by herself. Before Altruism was strong enough to take its own initiative, Necessity had to be laid hold upon by all mothers, animal and human, to act in the way required. In part physiological, this necessity was brought about under the ordinary action of

that principle which had to take charge of everything in Nature until the will of man appeared―natural selection. A mother who did not care for her children would have feeble and sickly children. Their children's children would be feeble and sickly children. And the day of reckoning would come, when they would be driven off the field by a hardier—that is, a better-mothered -race. Hence, the premium of nature upon all better mothers. Hence, the elimination of all the reproductive failures, of all the mothers who feel short of complet. ing the process to the last detail. And hence, by the law of the survival of the fittest, Altruism, which at this stage means Good-motherism, is forced upon the world.

This consummation reached, the foundations of the human world are finished. Nothing foreign remains to be added. All that need happen henceforth is that the struggle for the life of others should work out its destiny. To follow out the gains of Reproduction from this point would be to write the history of the nations, the history of civilization, the progress of social evolution. The key to all these processes is here. There is no intelligible account of the place of this factor in development. Sociology, practically, can only beat the air, can make no step forward as a science, until it recognizes this basis in biology. It is the failure, not so much to recognize the supremacy of this second factor, but to see that there is any second factor at all, that has vitiated almost every attempt to construct a sym

metrical social philosophy. It has long, indeed, been perceived that society is an organism, and an organism which has grown by natural growth, like a tree. But the tree to which it is usually likened is such a tree as never grew upon this earth. For it is a tree without flowers; a tree with nothing but stem and leaves; a tree that performed the function of Nutrition, and forgot all about Reproduction. The great unrecognized truth of social organism has grown, and flowered, and fruited in virtue of the continuous activities and interrelations of the two co-eternal functions of Nutrition and Reproduction, that these two dominants being at work it could not but grow, and grow in the way it has grown. When the dual nature of the evolving forces is perceived; when the reactions, one upon another, are understood; when the changed material which they have to work upon from time to time, the further obstacles confronting them at every stage, the new environments which modify their action as the centuries add their growths and disencumber them of their withered leaves-when all this is observed, the whole social order fall into line. From the dawn of life, these two forces have acted together, one continually separating, the other continually uniting; one continually looking to its own things, the other to the things of others. Both are great in Nature-but "the greatest of these is Love."

Abridged from Professor Drummond's "Ascent. of Man" by C. J. Peer.

A

RETROSPECT of the field of poetry shows us but few poets whose writings were permeated to any extent by the gospel of the Nazarene. In other words, great religious poets and great religious poems are few. Dante will ever hold his place in the poetical world. The "Inferno" is, in every sense, a great poem. Milton was the poetic exponent of the Reformation. Great in conception, a master in expression, and with ideals which touched Heaven. There is evidence of the progress of humanity in the fact that this present century has produced two great poets, whose lives and writings are largely the embodiment of a right gospel. I refer to James Russell Lowell and Alfred Tennyson. Whenever a writer incorporates into his work something of the Eternal, no matter whether attributes of humanity or of God, his work shall live. Lowell and Tennyson have done this.

energy and perseverance of those earlier years were, in due season, rewarded. Few writers have been so painstaking. "In Memoriam" was the result of seventeen years' work. Others of his better poems were ten years in writing. In 1850 Tennyson was married to Miss Emily Sellwood, in whom he found a companion fit indeed to be a great poet's companion. Few men of letters have been so singularly fortunate in their wedded life. During this same year appeared "In Memoriam," and he became the successor of Wordsworth as Poet Laureate. Other important events of his life are generally known. Twice he refused a baronetcy, but in 1884 was raised to the peerage. In 1855 Oxford conferred upon him the degree of D.C.L. He always preferred a few select friends whom he delighted to be with; at the same time he loved a more or less secluded life.

For over a quarter of a century he made his home on the Isle of Wight and at his summer residence at Allworth.

ing form, surmounted by a sombrero hat, was imposing and attractive. In a crowd he would have been selected as a remarkable personality, both in countenance and figure. He walked up and down in the dense shade of his beautiful woods, and the old glamour and sylvan sense of the forests of the "Faerie Queen" seemed over the home of this successor of Spenser. I ventured to speak of his multitude of readers in America, greater probably than even in England. But of all this I could tell him nothing new. The then absence of copyright compensation was naturally a sore subject with him.

After lunch he kindly repeated a part of one of his poems, first imitating the defects. of an ordinary reader, and then the same passage in his own sonorous, perfect enunciation. The difference was like that between a faint picture of a magnificent scene and the scene itself.

At parting he wrote his name on large cabinet photographs of himself and presented them to my daughters. We were most kindly invited to his Surrey home.

Two years later we found ourselves neighbors to the Tennysons in a permanent residence, the Blackdown Hill, with its outlook upon the English Channel, being alone between us. His Surrey house was approached by an avenue about two miles. long, leading under the shade of interlacing trees to a wild common which commands a magnificent view over a score of miles of wooded hills and valleys. After passing the stables you reach a commodious, ivy-covered mansion of stone with Gothic porches, having a sweep of three quarters of a circle of forty miles. In the drawing-room, Lady Tennyson, as always, was reclining on the sofa, the poet sitting on a lounge near by. I did not see a white line in his black hair, and his age might have been twenty years

less than his actual years. He seemed stern and tired at first, but he soon relaxed into a genial conversation, which took the turn of the scientific, systematic examination of phenomena by the Society for Physical Research, of which he was a member, and in whose proceedings he took a deep interest. He narrated some startling events in his own experiences which could only be explained by supernaturalism or thought transference. He went on to tell me of some amusing experiences of the estimates of his position by plain people. Many years ago a traveler passing his place on the Isle of Wight asked the cabman who lived there.

"Mr. Tennyson, sir," was the reply. "Oh, he is a very great man," said the traveler.

"He a great man!-a great man, indeed!" exclaimed the cabbie. "Why, he only keeps one man-servant, and he don't sleep in the house!"

There are different standards as to what constitutes greatness.

Once in Scotland, on leaving his hostelry, the landlady was informed that her late guest was a great poet.

"Eigh, sir!" exclaimed the woman in a high pitch, "a poet, and I gin him my best room!"

Her ideas of a poet socially may have been derived from habits of Burns.

My next call was a few hours before his death. The outer gate was fastened and a request was made that no one should go inside. A basket was hung on the gate for the cards of callers, with a stone inside to be laid on the cards to prevent their being blown away. I sadly put mine into the basket. We were to see that imposing countenance and form no more. That night I was out watching an exceptionally brilliant moon. It was in a clear

circle, surrounded by a corona of clouds of unusual color. A single star shone clearly upon one side, until, as I watched, it disappeared behind the cloud. It was just at that time that the great poet was hidden from our eyes by death. Soon the whole sky was clouded, and the English-speaking people were called to mourn the disappearance of one of their great luminaries, possibly their greatest, if regard be had to the centuries, or perhaps millenniums which will be made nobler by his verse.

Sir Andrew Clark said of this hour in the poet's dying room: "In all my experience I have never witnessed anything more glorious. There were no artificial lights in the chamber, and all was in darkness, save for the silvery light of the moon at its full. The soft beams of light fell on the bed and played upon the features of the dying poet like a halo of Rembrandt." The Spectator says, "Something is wanting in the sound of the world, for Tennyson is gone. He was part of the music of life throughout our period, audible in the silence of thought." For forty years the lines of "In Memoriam" ran more constantly through my memory than any, or even all, other poetry, and I was happy in being able to express my profound gratitude for them to their author. Like our own noble group of poets-Longfellow, Emerson, Whittier, Holmes "he uttered nothing base." No line of his needs to be blotted out. By him. has no youthful imagination been fouled. No erasure, no apology of friends is needed for any verse of Tennyson. No "allowance for genius" has to be made to condone any moral obliquity or personal fall. His shield is as the shield of Arthur, unblemished and polished. His strains will vibrate down the ages with no false note to deceive or allure.

A younger school of criticism agrees with Cabbic that "he's no great man," but from this there is a wiser reaction, and an almost unanimous tribute of the highest honor is given to his great memory. In the "Poets" Corner," in Britains Wahalla, Westminster Abbey, his bust will be near to those of Milton and Longfellow, beside the memorials of great, yet not greater, poets.

When a great man dies, how many sordid motives and actions break the harmony of the mourning. The newspaper men were in waiting, each eager to be the first to announce Tennyson's death. The editor of a great morning paper rudely observed, "He will die for the evening papers." A biography was printed in advance, all but the last page, with the death scene, and was hurried out even before the evening papers announced his decease. Several candidates for the Laureateship, with unseemly haste, hurried their poems, on his death, into print. The unpleasant details of the undertaker's service were set out at length. Sketchers and reporters for newspapers haunted his residence, setting at naught the privacy so craved by the dying poet and his family. The tragic and the mercenary are mingled in the scene. But we will think only of the sublime and somber event of the loss of the greatest of our poets, who, like the birds, voiced for us the glories of nature which the rest of us feel, but cannot express. Honor to him who has done. it the most perfectly of all the singers of our century, and who also sounded the deepest depths of our spiritual natures with reverent and hopeful utterance.

Will a kind Heaven ever send us his equal-will any one again tune our language to strains equal to those of Lord Tennyson?