for our own part, we think there cannot be too great security against a lack of fresh water or of pure morality.  To us it is a matter of unmixed rejoicing that this latter necessary of healthful life is independent of theological ink, and that its evolution is insured in the interaction of human souls as certainly as the evolution of science or art, with which, indeed, it is but a twin ray, melting into them with undefinable limits.

The considerations here presented are very effective ones, and quite as truthful as effective.  There are human supports for morality of the most important and far-reaching character, and such as are outside of any theological considerations.  We ought, as George Eliot so well says, to rejoice that the reasons for being moral are manifold, that sympathy with others, as well as the central fires of personality, or the craving to be in harmony with the Eternal, is able to conduce to a righteous conduct.  Her objections to Young’s narrow and selfish defence of immortality are well presented and powerful, but they do not touch such high considerations as those offered by Kant.  The craving for personal freedom and perfection is as strong and as helpful to the race as sympathy for others and yearning to lift up the weak and fallen.  When the sense of personality is gone, man loses much of his character; and personality rests on a deep spiritual foundation which does not mean egotism merely, but which does mean for the majority a conviction of a continued existence.  The tendency of the present time is to dwell less upon the theological and more upon the human motives to conduct; but it is to be doubted if the highest phases of morality can be retained without belief in God and a future life.  The common virtues, the sympathetic motives to conduct, the spirit of helpfulness, may be retained intact, and even increased in power and efficiency, by those motives George Eliot presents; but the loftier virtues of personal heroism and devotion to truth in the face of martyrdom of one form or another, the saintly craving for purity and holiness, and the sturdy spirit of liberty which will suffer no bonds to exist, can be had in their full development only with belief that God calls us to seek for perfect harmony with himself.  Kant’s view that a divine law within, the living word of God, calls ever to us as personal beings to attain the perfection of our natures in the perfection of the race, and in conformity to the eternal law of righteousness, is far nobler and truer than that which George Eliot accepted.

She was not a mere unbeliever, however, for she did not thrust aside the hope of immortality with a contemptuous hand.  This problem she left where she left that concerning God, in the background of thought, among the questions which cannot be solved.  She believed that the power to contribute to the future good of the race is hope and promise enough.  At the same time, she was very tender of the positive beliefs of others, and especially of that yearning so many feel after personal recognition and development.  Writing to one who passionately clung to such a hope, she said,—­