GOODNESS AS ITS OWN REWARD.
'_Who chooses me must give, and hazard all he hath._' Inscription on
the Leaden Casket. _Merchant of Venice._
What I have been urging in the last chapter is really nothing more than
the positivists admit themselves. It will be found, if we study their
utterances as a whole, that they by no means believe practically in
their own professions, or consider that the end of action can be either
defined and verified by sociology, or made attractive by sympathy. On
the contrary, they confess plainly how inadequate these are by
themselves, by continually supplementing them with additions from quite
another quarter. But their fault is that this confession is, apparently,
only half conscious with them; and they are for ever reproducing
arguments as sufficient which they have already in other moments
implicitly condemned as meaningless. My aim has been, therefore, to put
these arguments out of court altogether, and safely shut the doors on
them. Hitherto they have played just the part of an idle populace, often
turned out of doors, but as often breaking in again, and confusing with
their noisy cheers a judgment that has not yet been given. Let us have
done, then, with the conditions of happiness till we know what happiness
is. Let us have done with enthusiasm till we know if there is anything
to be enthusiastic about.
I have quoted George Eliot's cheers already, as expressing what this
enthusiasm is. I will now quote her again, as showing how fully she
recognises that its value depends upon its object, and that its only
possible object must be of a definite, and in the first place, of a
personal nature. In her novel of _Daniel Deronda_, the large part of the
interest hangs on which way the heroine's character will develop itself;
and this interest, in the opinion of the authoress, is of a very intense
kind. Why should it be? she asks explicitly. And she gives her answer in
the following very remarkable and very instructive passage:
'_Could there be a slenderer, more insignificant thread,_' she says,
'_in human history, than this consciousness of a girl, busy with her
small inferences of the way in which she could make her life pleasant?
in a time too, when ideas were with fresh vigour making armies of
themselves, and the universal kinship was declaring itself fiercely:
when women on the other side of the world would not mourn for the
husbands and sons who died bravely in a common cause; and men, stinted
of bread, on one side of the world, heard of that willing loss and were
patient; a time when the soul of man was waking the pulses which had for
centuries been beating in him unheard, until their full sense made a new
life of terror or of joy._
'_What in the midst of that mighty drama are girls and their blind
visions? They are the Yea or Nay of that good for which men are enduring
and fighting. In these delicate vessels is borne onward through the ages
the treasure of human affections._'
Now here we come to solid ground at last. Here is an emphatic and frank
admission of all that I was urging in the last chapter; and the required
end of action and test of conduct is brought to a focus and localized.
It is not described, it is true; but a narrow circle is drawn round it,
and our future search for it becomes a matter of comparative ease. We
are in a position now to decide whether it exists, or does not exist. It
consists primarily and before all things in the choice by the individual
of one out of many modes of happiness--the election of a certain
'_way_,' in George Eliot's words, '_in which he will make his life
pleasant_.' There are many sets of pleasure open to him; but there is
one set, it is said, more excellent, beyond comparison, than the others;
and to choose these, and these alone, is what will give us part in the
holy value of life. The choice and the refusal of them is the Yea and
the Nay of all that makes life worth living; and is the source, to the
positivists, of the solemnity, the terrors, and sweetness of the whole
ethical vocabulary. '_What then are the alternative pleasures that life
offers_ me? _In how many ways am_ I _capable of feeling_ my _existence a
blessing? and in what way shall_ I _feel the blessing of it most
keenly_?' This is the great life-question; it may be asked indifferently
by any individual; and in the positivist answer to it, which will be the
same for all, and of universal application, must lie the foundation of
the positive moral system.
And that system, as I have said before, professes to be essentially a
_moral_ one, in the old religious sense of the word. It retains the old
ethical vocabulary; and lays the same intense stress on the old ethical
distinctions. Nor is this a mere profession only. We shall see that the
system logically requires it. One of its chief virtues--indeed the only
virtue in it we have defined hitherto--is, as has been seen, an habitual
self-denial. But a denial of what? Of something, plainly, that if denied
to ourselves, can be conveyed as a negative or positive good to others.
But the good things that are thus transferable cannot plainly be the
'_highest good_,' or morality would consist largely of a surrender of
its own end. This end must evidently be something inward and
inalienable, just as the religious end was. It is a certain inward state
of the heart, and of the heart's affections. For this inward state to
be fully produced, and maintained generally, a certain sufficiency of
material well-being may be requisite; but without this inward state such
sufficiency will be morally valueless. Day by day we must of course have
our daily bread. But the positivists must maintain, just as the
Christians did, that man does not live by bread alone; and that his life
does not consist in the abundance of the things that he possesses. And
thus when they are brought face to face with the matter, we find them
all, with one consent, condemning as false the same allurements that
were condemned by Christianity; and pointing, as it did, to some other
treasure that will not wax old--some water, the man who drinks of which
will never thirst more.
Now what is this treasure--this inward state of the heart? What is its
analysis, and why is it so precious? As yet we are quite in the dark as
to this. No positive moralist has as yet shown us, in any satisfactory
way, either of these things. This statement, I know, will be
contradicted by many; and, until it is explained further, it is only
natural that it should be. It will be said that a positive human
happiness of just the kind needed has been put before the world again
and again; and not only put before it, but earnestly followed and
reverently enjoyed by many. Have not truth, benevolence, purity, and,
above all, pure affection, been, to many, positive ends of action for
their own sakes, without any thought, as Dr. Tyndall says, '_of any
reward or punishment looming in the future_'? Is not virtue followed in
the noblest way, when its followers, if asked what reward they look for,
can say to it, as Thomas Aquinas said to Christ, '_Nil nisi te,
Domine_'? And has not it so been followed? and is not the positivist
position, to a large extent at any rate, proved?
Is it not true, as has been said by a recent writer, that[11] '_lives
nourished, and invigorated by_ [a purely human] _ideal have been, and
still may be, seen amongst us, and the appearance of but a single
example proves the adequacy of the belief_?'
I reply that the fact is entirely true, and the inference entirely
false. And this brings me at once to a point I have before alluded
to--to the most subtle source of the entire positivist error--the source
secret and unsuspected, of so much rash confidence.
The positive school can, and do, as we have seen, point to certain
things in life which have every appearance, at first sight, of adequate
moral ends. Their adequacy seems to be verified by every right feeling,
and also by practical experiment. But there is one great fact that is
forgotten. The positive school, when they deal with life, profess to
exhibit its resources to us wholly free from the false aids of
religion. They profess (if I may coin a word) to have _de-religionized_
it before they deal with it. But about this matter they betray a most
strange ignorance. They think the task is far simpler than it is. They
seem to look on religion as existing nowhere except in its pure form, in
the form of distinct devotional feeling, or in the conscious assents of
faith; and, these once got rid of, they fancy that life is
de-religionized. But the process thus far is really only begun; indeed,
as far as immediate results go, it is hardly even begun; for it is
really but a very small proportion of religion that exists pure. The
greater part of it has entered into combination with the acts and
feelings of life, thus forming as it were, a kind of amalgam with them,
giving them new properties, a new colour, a new consistence. To
_de-religionize_ life, then, it is not enough to condemn creeds and to
abolish prayers. We must further sublimate the beliefs and feelings,
which prayers and creeds hold pure, out of the lay life around us. Under
this process, even if imperfectly performed, it will soon become clear
that religion in greater or less proportions is lurking everywhere. We
shall see it yielded up even by things in which we should least look for
it--by wit, by humour, by secular ambition, by most forms of vice, and
by our daily light amusements. Much more shall we see it yielded up by
heroism, by purity, by affection, and by love of truth--by all those
things that the positivists most specially praise.
The positivists think, it would seem, that they had but to kill God, and
that his inheritance shall be ours. They strike out accordingly the
theistic beliefs in question, and then turn instantly to life: they sort
its resources, count its treasures, and then say, '_Aim at this, and
this, and this. See how beautiful is holiness; see how rapturous is
pleasure. Surely these are worth seeking for their own sakes, without
any "reward or punishment looming in the future."_' They find, in fact,
the interests and the sentiments of the world's present life--all the
glow and all the gloom of it--lying before them like the colours on a
painter's palette, and think they have nothing to do but set to work and
use them. But let them wait a moment; they are in far too great a hurry.
The palette and its colours are not nearly ready for them.
One of the colours of life--religion, that is--a colour which, by their
own admission, has been hitherto an important one, they have swept clean
away. They have swept it clean away, and let them remember why they have
done so. It may be a pleasing colour, or it may not: that is a matter of
taste. But the reason why it is to be got rid of is that it is not a
fast colour. It is found to fade instantly in the spreading sunlight of
knowledge. It is rapidly getting dim and dull and dead. When once it is
gone, we shall never be able to restore it, and our future pictures of
life must be tinted without its aid. They therefore profess loudly that
they will employ it no longer.
But there is this point, this all-important point, that quite escapes
them. They sweep the colour, in its pure state, clean off the palette;
and then profess to show us by experiment that they can get on perfectly
well without it. But they never seem to suspect that it may be mixed up
with the colours they retain, and be the secret of their depth and
lustre. Let them see whether religion be not lurking there, as a subtle
colouring principle in all their pigments, even a grain of it producing
effects that else were quite impossible. Let them only begin this
analysis, and it will very soon be clear to them that to cleanse life of
religion is not so simple a process as they seem to fancy it. Its actual
dogmas may be readily put away from us; not so the effect which these
dogmas have worked during the course of centuries. In disguised forms
they are around us everywhere; they confront us in every human interest,
in every human pleasure. They have beaten themselves into life; they
have eaten their way into it. Like a secret sap they have flavoured
every fruit in the garden. They are like a powerful drug, a stimulant,
that has been injected into our whole system.
If then we could appraise the vigour and value of life independent of
religion, we can draw no direct conclusions from observing it in its
present state. Before such observations can teach us anything, there is
a great deal that will have to be made allowance for: and the positive
school, when they reason from life as it is, are building therefore on
an utterly unsound foundation. It is emphatically untrue to say that a
single example in the present day, or for matter of that any number of
examples, either goes or can go any way towards proving the adequacy of
any non-religious formula. For all such formulæ have first to be further
analysed before we know how far they are really non-religious; and
secondly the religious element that will be certainly found existing in
them will have, hypothetically, to be removed.
It would be well if the positive school would spend in this spiritual
analysis but a little of that skill they have attained to in their
analysis of matter. In their experiments, for instance, on spontaneous
generation, what untold pains have been taken! With what laborious
thought, with what emulous ingenuity, have they struggled to completely
sterilise the fluids in which they are to seek for the new production of
life! How jealously do they guard against leaving there any already
existing germs! How easily do they tell us their experiments may be
vitiated by the smallest oversight!
Surely spiritual matters are worthy of an equally careful treatment.
For what we have here to study is not the production of the lowest forms
of animal life, but the highest forms of human happiness. These were
once thought to be always due to religion. The modern doctrine is that
they are producible without such aid. Let us treat, then, the beauty of
holiness, the love of truth, '_the treasure of human affection_,' and so
forth, as Dr. Tyndall has treated the infusions in which life is said to
originate. Let us boil them down, so to speak, and destroy every germ of
religion in them, and then see how far they will generate the same
ecstatic happiness. And let us treat in this way vice no less than
virtue. Having once done this, we may honestly claim whatever yet
remains to us. Then, we shall see what materials of happiness we can, as
positive thinkers, call our own. Then, a positive moral system, if any
such be possible, will begin to have a real value for us--then, but not
till then.
Such an analysis as this must be naturally a work of time; and much of
it must be performed by each one of us for ourselves. But a sample of
the operation can be given here, which will show plainly enough its
nature, and the ultimate results of it. I shall begin, for this purpose,
with reconsidering the moral end generally, and the three primary
characteristics that are ascribed, by all parties, to it, as
essentials. I shall point out, generally also, how much of religion is
embodied in all these; and shall then proceed to one or two concrete
examples, taken from the pleasures and passions that animate the life
around us.
These three characteristics of the moral end are its inwardness, its
importance, and, within certain limits, its absolute character.
I begin with its inwardness. I have spoken of this several times
already, but the matter is so important that it will well bear
repetition. By calling the moral end inward, I mean that it resides
primarily not in action, but in motives to action; in the will, not in
the deed; not in what we actually do, but in what we actually endeavour
to do; in the love we give, rather than in the love that we receive.
What defiles a man is that which comes out of his heart--evil thoughts,
murders, adulteries. The thoughts may never find utterance in a word,
the murders and adulteries may never be fulfilled in act; and yet, if a
man be restrained, not by his own will, but only by outer circumstances,
his immorality will be the same. The primary things we are '_responsible
for_,' observes a recent positive writer,[12] are '_frames of mind into
which we knowingly and willingly work ourselves_': and when these are
once wrong, he adds, '_they are wrong for ever: no accidental failure
of their good or evil fruits can possibly alter that_.' And as with what
is wrong or vicious, so with what is right or virtuous; this in a like
manner proceeds out of the mind or heart. '_The gladness of true
heroism_,' says Dr. Tyndall, '_visits the heart of him who is really
competent to say, "I court truth."_' It is not, be it observed, the
objective attainment of truth that creates the gladness. It is the
subjective desire, the subjective resolution. The moral end, for the
positivist just as much as for the believer, is a certain inward state
of the heart, or mind--a state which will of necessity, if possible,
express itself in action, but whose value is not to be measured by the
success of that expression. The battle-ground of good and evil is within
us; and the great human event is the issue of the struggle between them.
And this leads us on to the second point. The language used on all hands
respecting this struggle, implies that its issue is of an importance
great out of all proportion to our own consciousness of the results of
it, nay, even that it is independent of our consciousness. It is implied
that though a man may be quite ignorant of the state of his own heart,
and though no one else can so much as guess at it, what that state is is
of great and peculiar moment. If this were not so, and the importance of
our inner state had reference only to our own feelings about it,
self-deception would be as good as virtue. To believe we were upright,
pure, and benevolent would be as good as to be so. We might have all the
pleasures of morality with none of its inconveniences; for it is easy,
if I may borrow a phrase of Mr. Tennyson's, to become _so false that we
take ourselves for true_; and thus, tested by any pain or joy that we
ourselves were conscious of, the results of the completest falsehood
would be the same as those of the completest virtue.
But let a man be never so perfect an instance of a result like this, no
positivist moralist would contend that he was virtuous, or that he could
be said, at his death, to have found the true treasure of life. On the
contrary his career would be regarded as, in the profoundest sense, a
tragedy. It is for this reason that such a value is set at present upon
feminine purity, and that we are accustomed to call the woman ruined
that has lost it. The outer harm done may not be great, and may lead to
no ill consequences. The harm is all within: the tragedy is in the soul
itself. But--and this is more important still--even here the harm may
not be recognised: the act in question may lead to no remorse; and yet
despite this, the case will be made no better. On the contrary it will
be made a great deal worse. Any father or husband would recognise this,
who was not professedly careless about all moral matters altogether. It
would not, for instance, console a positivist for his daughter's
seduction to know that the matter was hushed up, and that it gave the
lady herself no concern whatever. It is implied in the language of all
who profess to regard morality, that whether the guilty person be
conscious or no of any remorse or sorrow, the same harm has been done by
what we call guilt.
There is, however (and this brings us to the third point), a very large
part of the world that, as a fact, no matter what it professes, really
sets upon morality no true value whatever. If it has ever realised at
all what morality is, it has done so only partially; it has been more
impressed with its drawbacks than with its attractions, and it becomes
practically happier and more contented, the more it forgets the very
idea of virtue. But it is implied, as we have seen, in the usual
language of all of us that, let the vicious be as happy as possible,
they have no right to such a happiness, and that if they choose to take
it, it will in some way or other be the worse for them. This language
evidently implies farther that there is some standard by which happiness
is to be measured, quite apart from its completeness, and from our
individual desire for it. That standard is something absolute, beyond
and above the taste of any single man or of any body of men. It is a
standard to which the human race can be authoritatively ordered to
conform, or be despised, derided, and hated, if it refuse to do so. It
is implied that those who find their happiness in virtue have a right to
order and to force, if possible, all others to do the same. Unless we
believed this there would be no such thing as moral earnestness in the
propagation of any system. There could, indeed, be no such thing as
propagandism at all. If a man (to use an example of Mill's) preferred to
be a contented pig rather than a discontented Socrates, we should have
no positive reason for thinking him wrong; even did we think so we
should have no motive for telling him so; even if we told him, we should
have no means of convincing him.
Those, then, who regard morality as the rule of action, and the one key
that can unlock for each of us the true treasure of life, who talk of
things being noble and sacred and heroic, who call our responsibilities
and our privileges[13] awful, and who urge on a listless world the
earnestness and the solemnity of existence--all those, I say, who use
such language as this, imply of the moral end three necessary things:
first, that its essence is inward, in the heart of man; secondly, that
its value is incalculable, and its attainment the only true happiness
for us; thirdly, that its standard is something absolute, and not in
the competence of any man or of all men to alter or abolish. That this
is true may be very easily seen. Deny any one of these propositions; say
that the moral end consists in something outward and alienable, not in
something inward and inalienable; that its importance is small, and
second to many other things; that its standard is not absolute, but
varies according to individual taste; and morality becomes at once
impossible to preach, and not worth preaching.
Now for all these characteristics of the end of life, the theism that
modern thought is rejecting could offer a strictly logical basis. And
first, as to its importance. Here it may be said, certainly, that theism
cuts the knot, and does not untie it. But at all events it gets rid of
it; and in the following way. The theist confesses freely that the
importance of the moral end is a thing that the facts of life, as we now
know them, will never properly explain to us. It can at present be
divined and augured only; its value is one of promise rather than of
performance; and the possession itself is a thing that passes
understanding. It belongs to a region of mystery into which neither
logic nor experiment will ever suffice to carry us; and whose secrets
are beyond the reach of any intellectual aeronaut. But it is a part of
the theistic creed that such a region is; and that the things that pass
understanding are the most important things of life. Nothing would be
gained, however, by postulating merely a mystery--an unknowable. This
must be so far known by the theist, that he knows its connection with
himself. He must know, too, that if this connection is to have any
effect on him, it must be not merely temporary, but permanent and
indissoluble. Such a connection he finds in his two distinctive
doctrines--the existence of a personal God, which _gives_ him the
connection; and his own personal immortality, which _perpetuates_ it.
Thus the theist, upon his own theory, has an eye ever upon him. He is in
constant relationship with a conscious omnipotent Being, in whose
likeness he is in some sort formed, and to which he is in some sort kin.
To none of his actions is this Being indifferent; and with this Being
his relations for good or evil will never cease. Thus, though he may not
realise their true nature now, though he may not realise how infinitely
good the good is, or how infinitely evil the evil, there is a day in
store for him when his eyes will be opened, and what he now sees only
through a glass darkly, he will see face to face.
The objectivity of the moral end--or rather the objective standard of
the subjective end--is explained in the same way. The standard is God's
will, not man's immediate happiness. And yet to this will, as soon as,
by natural or supernatural means, we discern it, the Godlike part of
our nature at once responds: it at once acknowledges it as eternal and
divine, although we can give no logical reasons for such acknowledgment.
By the light, too, of these same beliefs, the inwardness of the moral
end assumes an explicable meaning. Man's primary duty is towards God;
his secondary duty is towards his brother men; and it is only from the
filial relation that the fraternal springs. The moral end, then, is so
precious in the eyes of the theist, because the inward state that it
consists of is agreeable to what God wills--a God who reads the heart,
and who cannot be deceived. And the theist's peace or gladness in his
highest moral actions springs not so much from the consciousness of what
he does or is, as of the reasons why he does or is it--reasons that
reach far away beyond the earth and its destinies, and connect him with
some timeless and holy mystery.
Thus theism, whether it be true or no, can give a logical and a full
account of the supposed nature of the moral end, and of its supposed
importance. Let us turn now to positivism, and consider what is its
position. The positivist, we must remember, conceives of the moral end
in the same way, and sets upon it the same value. Let us see how far his
own premisses will give him any support in this. These premisses, so far
as they differ from those of theism, consist of two great denials:
there is no personal God, and there is no personal immortality. We will
glance rapidly at the direct results of these.
In the first place, they confine all the life with which we can have the
least moral connection to the surface of this earth, and to the limited
time for which life and consciousness can exist upon it. They isolate
the moral law, as I shall show more clearly hereafter, from any law or
force in the universe that may be wider and more permanent. When the
individual dies, he can only be said to live by metaphor, in the results
of his outward actions. When the race dies, in no thinkable way can we
say that it will live at all. Everything will then be as though it never
had been. Whatever humanity may have done before its end arrives,
however high it may have raised itself, however low it may have sunk
itself,
_The event
Will trammel up the consequence, and catch
With its success surcease_.
All the vice of the world, and all its virtue, all its pleasures and all
its pains, will have effected nothing. They will all have faded like an
unsubstantial pageant, and not left a wrack behind.
Here, then, the importance of morality at once changes both its
dimensions and its kind. It is confined within narrow limitations of
space and time. It is no longer a thing we can talk vaguely about, or
to which any sounding but indefinite phrases will be applicable. We can
no longer say either to the individual or the race,
_Choose well, and your choice is
Brief, but yet endless._[14]
We can only say that it is brief, and that bye and bye what it was will
be no matter to anyone.
Still within these limits it may be said, certainly, that it is a great
thing for us that we should be happy; and if it be true that the moral
end brings the greatest happiness, then it is man's greatest achievement
to attain to the moral end. But when we say that the greatest happiness
resides in the moral end, we must be careful to see what it is we mean.
We may mean that as a matter of fact men generally give a full assent to
this, and act accordingly, which is the most obvious falsehood that
could be uttered on any subject; or we may mean--indeed, if we mean
anything we must mean--that they would give a full assent, and act
accordingly, could their present state of mind undergo a complete
change, and their eyes be opened, which at present are fast closed. But
according to the positivist theory, this hypothesis is in most cases an
impossibility. The moral end, as we have seen, is an inward state of the
heart; and the heart, on the showing of the positivists, is for each
man an absolute solitude. No one can gain admission to it but by his
assistance; and to the larger part no one can ever gain admission at
all.
_Thus in the seas of life enisled,
With echoing straits between us thrown,
Dotting the shoreless watery wild,
We mortal myriads live alone._
So says Mr. Matthew Arnold; and the gentle Keble utters the same
sentiment, remarking, with a delicate pathos, how seldom those even who
have known us best and longest
_Know half the reason why we smile or sigh._
Thus in the recesses of his own soul each man is, for the positivist, as
much alone as if he were the only conscious thing in the universe; and
his whole inner life, when he dies, will, to use some words of George
Eliot's that I have already quoted,
_Be gathered like a scroll within the tomb,
Unread for ever._
No one shall enquire into his inward thoughts, much less shall anyone
judge him for them. To no one except himself can he in any way have to
answer for them.
Such is the condition of the individual according to the positivist
theory. It is evident, therefore, that one of the first results of
positivism is to destroy even the rudiments of any machinery by which
one man could govern, with authority, the inward kingdom of another;
and the moral imperative is reduced to an empty vaunt. For what can be
an emptier flourish than for one set of men, and these a confessed
minority, to proclaim imperious laws to others, which they can never get
the others to obey, and which are essentially meaningless to the only
people to whom they are not superfluous? Suppose that, on positive
grounds, I find pleasure in humility, and my friend finds pleasure in
pride, and so far as we can form a judgment the happiness of us both is
equal; what possible grounds can I have for calling my state better than
his? Were I a theist, I should have the best of grounds, for I should
believe that hereafter my friend's present contentment would be
dissipated, and would give place to despair. But as a positivist, if his
contentment do but last his lifetime, what can I say except this, that
he has chosen what, for him, was his better part for ever, and no God or
man will ever take it away from him? To say then that his immoral state
was worse than my moral state would be a phrase incapable of any
practical meaning. It might mean that, could my friend be made to think
as I do, he would be happier than he is at present; but we have here an
impossible hypothesis, and an unverifiable conclusion. It is true enough
that I might present to my friend some image of my own inward state, and
of all the happiness it gave me; but if, having compared his happiness
and mine as well as he could, he still liked his own best, exhortation
would have no power, and reproach no meaning.
Here, then, are three results--simple, immediate, and necessary--of
positivism, on the moral end. Of the three characteristics at present
supposed essential to it, positivism eliminates two and materially
modifies the third.
In the first place, the importance of the moral end is altogether
changed in character. It has nothing in it whatever of the infinite, and
a scientific forecast can already see the end of it.
In the second place, it is nothing absolute, and not being absolute is
incapable of being enforced.
In the third place, its value, such as it is, is measured only by the
_conscious_ happiness that its possession gives us, or the conscious
pains that its loss gives us.
Still it may be contended with plausibility that the moral end, when
once seen, is sufficient to attract us by its own inalienable charm, and
can hold its own independently of any further theories as to its nature
and its universality. It remains now to come to practical life, and see
if this really be so; to see if the pleasures in life that are supposed
the highest will not lose their attractiveness when robbed of the three
characteristics of which the positive theory robs them.
FOOTNOTES:
[11] Vide _Pessimism_, by James Sully.
[12] Professor Clifford; 'Ethics of Belief,' _Contemporary Review_, Jan.
1877.
[13] '_An awful privilege, and an awful responsibility, that we should
help to create a world in which posterity will live!_'--Professor
Clifford.
[14] Goethe, translated by Carlyle.