the survival of the fittest. Each expresses its own peculiar phase of nature's operations.

The law of the "survival of the fittest," in the minds of su perficial thinkers, is not only made to justify all the inequalities of life, but is even made a pretext for encouraging the continuance, "with interlocked and grappling brains," of that program which nature began in blood and death, and thus the progress of the universal drama is stopped in the sixth act, just where the plot deepens and darkens into midnight mystery, and the toils are closing around the feet of innocence. So well has the great law of the survival of the fittest played his part, that though his hands are bloody, and damaging evidence thickens and darkens around him, he has nevertheless carried his audience by storm, and now, in response to the applause of those who have mistaken the climax of a cruel act for the close, he comes before the scenes, and so the play is interrupted. But be assured, it will go on till the blood upon the hand of the accused shall be seen to be that which stains. the surgeon's hand and not the murderer's, till slowly the cunningly woven plot shall be unraveled, and every trace of conjured evidence that implicates the star in nature's troupe shall vanish with the breaking web of falsehood, and the accused shall stand vindicated and triumphant in the dazzling glory of the closing scene.

Nature marks the steps of her own progress by serial changes in her definition of the "fittest." At the lower end of the scale of life it means the strongest body, fiercest in combat. Mid-way between the top and bottom it means the sharpest wit and deepest cunning, but at the top it means the soul most ministrant to human need. The ignoring of this latter form of survival is a scientific as well as ethical mistake, for the ultimate survival of the fittest soul is as much a part of nature's scheme as that of the fittest body or mind.

Moral philosophy and Christianity are thus inseparably linked with evolution.

Nature utilizes her own products as fast as completed. When vital force blossomed into consciousness she made the resulting affections and aversions the basis of the survival of the fittest body. When intellect was evolved, intelligent selection became the instrument of further evolution in the same direction and thus resulted in the survival of the fittest mind, and when at last the ethical instinct dawned dimly in the human soul the resulting moral impulses at once became the seed, the fruition of which shall be the survival of the fittest soul.

The animal and human instincts at each stage of this serial survival accord with the work to be accomplished. The sick bird is killed by its healthy comrades and the savage mother strangles her crippled infant. But the instinct of the civilized mother is as much a product of nature as is that of the savage mother, and it prompts her freely to give her own life in wasting vigils at midnight by the cradle of her physically unfit child.

The formulas of these three survivals are: "I will kill thee," "I will outwit and cheat thee," "I will reach down to thy station and lift thee up." Darwin and others have tried in vain to account for the higher development by the first formula. Adam Smith based his philosophy on the second, which is now being weighed in the balance and found wanting. But over eighteen centuries ago a system of philosophy which the world scorned and rejected was based on the third formula. Its founder was the gentle Jesus, in whose soul there was no conflict save that which at last shall conquer wrong and lift to earth's throne, glory-crowned but clad in work day garb, the holy form of justice.

There is nothing more supernatural in the self-sacrificing instinct which reverses the order of combat and makes the militant party the direct helper of the weak, than there is in the sexual combat of natural selection which kills the weak. The law of evolution is emasculated and shorn of its beauty if we omit, or relegate to some other law, its most significant operations. What means the helping hand of strength that is beginning to be outstretched toward weakness all over the civilized world? It means that nature is reversing the order and making conflict the direct instead of the indirect instrument of development. In the survival of the fittest body, she could not use this principle of mutual helpfulness, in which the conflict is subjective to the helping agent. She could only hint at it in the survival of the fittest mind, but she can use it altogether in the survival of the fittest soul. At the base of Calvary the weed has choked the flower. Half way up the rugged steep the two are interlocked in fierce but equal strife, while on the summit, triumphant in eternal bloom, the flower has choked the weed.

Go follow in the storm's wild wake,

While tear-drops dim fair Nature's eyes,
And learn that through her wide domain
The fittest is the first that dies.
The opening bud that promised well
Will ruthless on the ground be cast,

While petals of the loveliest rose

Will strew the footprints of the blast.

Go gather garland rich and fair

From out thy perfumed garden bower,
And place it in thy silver vase,

And watch it for a brief sweet hour.

The first to fade and droop away

And fall from out the rosy band,

Will be the flower you loved the best

And nurtured with the tenderest hand.

The tree that bears the sweetest fruit
We need to guard with watchful care,
And shield it from the icy blast,

That raves through winter's frosty air.
The purest life on mother's breast,

That pauses thoughtful in its play, Is that which soonest wings its flight, From out-grown chrysalis of clay

But 'neath this mystic law of life
There lies concealed a meaning deep,
That holds within its jeweled palm

A message for the souls that weep: "The fittest on the earth survive"

Hath meaning yet beyond our ken,
And holds an unexplored realm,
To modify the thoughts of men.

For that which yields, the readiest prey
On earth, to storm and angry sea,
In all that maketh life divine,

Seems fittest for the great To-Be.
Where souls, at top of being's chain,

Turn back to view the pendent links That mark the still unbroken line

From silent dust to that which thinks;

Where thought's mysterious power gains rule,
O'er Nature's elemental law,

And builds a world of mighty love

Above the reign of tooth and claw; On Nature's heights the tables turn, The brutal law she doth o'erwhelm, While mercy, justice, love and truth Are crowned the fittest in her realm.

bre Sargent

INDIVIDUALITY IN WOMAN.

BY

MISS FRANCES E. WILLARD,

WE

foremothers.

E are but the third generation from our revolutionary If each of us could clasp

hands with our mother and she with hers, these links would bridge the distance that separates us from Abigail Adams, the mother of the revolution; Martha Washington, its most stately lady, and Molly Pitcher, its most notable heroine. Like ourselves, those women bowed before the cross and were devoted to the flag; like us they were the allies of the men who amid storms of shot and shell declared for "revolution "; like us they staked their all upon the triumph of the cause to which these men had pledged "their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor." My own dear mother, to-day in the tranquil brightness of her 82d year, has often told me of her New England grandfather, who once found himself the only revolutionist present at a public dinner, whereupon an attempt was made to coerce him by the toast, "King George's health,