Man has to find and to _feel_ his true relation to other creatures and to the whole of which he is a part, and has to use his brain to further this. Science _is_, as we all know, the search for Unity. That is its ideal. It unites innumerable phenomena under one law; and then it unites many laws under one higher; always seeking for the ultimate complete integration. But (is it not obvious?) Man cannot find that unity _of_ the Whole until he feels his unity _with_ the Whole. To found a Science of one-ness on the murderous Warfare and insane Competition of men with each other, and on the Slaughter and Vivisection of animals--the search for unity on the practice of disunity--is an absurdity, which can only in the long run reveal itself as such.
I do not know whether it seems obvious to you, but it does to me, that Man will never find in theory the unity of outer Nature till he reaches in practice the unity of his own. When he has learnt to harmonise in himself all his powers, bodily and mental, his desires, faculties, needs, and bring them into perfect co-operation--when he has found the true hierarchy of himself--then somehow I think that Nature round him will reflect this order, and range itself in clear and intelligible harmony about him.
But I can say no more. I have dragged you by the neck, as it were, through a recondite and difficult subject; and even so I do not feel that I have by any means done justice to it. But it is possible, perhaps, that I have cast the germ of an idea among you, which, if you think over it at leisure, may develop into something of value.
[40] Afterwards reprinted in a modified form, as "Modern Science--a Criticism," in the first edition (1889) of the present book.
[41] Elisée Reclus, in his remarkable paper, _La Grande Famille_, points out the wide-reaching _Friendship_, and free alliance for various purposes, of primitive man with the animals, existing long before the so-called "domestication" of the latter. See _Humane Review_, January, 1906.
The tendency of the Evolution Theory, as it penetrates human thought, is to rub out lines--the old lines of formal classification. We no longer now put in a class apart those animals which have horns or cloven hooves, because we find that continuous descent and close kinship weave relations which are not bounded by horns or hooves. And, for a not dissimilar reason, modern thought, based on the theory of evolution, is tending to rub out the hard and fast lines between moral Right and Wrong--the old formal classifications of _actions_ as some in their nature good, and some in their nature bad.