the Universe by following the rules he has at his pleasure laid down for the obedience of his helpless subjects; in some cases, however, religions of later growth have made morality to depend on the sentiment of gratitude to that Ruler for benefits received.  The worthlessness, not to speak of the mischievousness, of such systems of morality is almost self-evident.  As a type of morality founded on hope and fear, we shall take an instance from the Christian Bible:  “He that giveth to the poor lendeth to the Lord.”  The duty of supporting the poor is here made to depend upon prudential motives of laying by for a time when the “giver to the poor” will be incapable of taking care of himself.  But the Mahabharata says that “He that desireth a return for his good deeds loseth all merit; he is like a merchant bartering his goods.”  The true springs of morality lose their elasticity under the pressure of such criminal selfishness; all pure and unselfish natures will fly away from it in disgust.

To avoid such consequences attempts have been made by some recent reformers of religion to establish morality upon the sentiment of gratitude to the Lord.  But it requires no deep consideration to find that, in their endeavours to shift the basis of morality, these reformers have rendered morality entirely baseless.  A man has to do what is represented to be a thing “dear unto the Lord” out of gratitude for the many blessings He has heaped upon him.  But as a matter of fact he finds that the Lord has heaped upon him curses as well as blessings.  A helpless orphan is expected to be grateful to him for having removed the props of his life, his parents, because he is told in consolation that such a calamity is but apparently an evil, but in reality the All-Merciful has underneath it hidden the greatest possible good.  With equal reason might a preacher of the Avenging Ahriman exhort men to believe that under the apparent blessings of the “Merciful” Father there lurks the serpent of evil.

The modern Utilitarians, though the range of their vision is so narrow, have sterner logic in their teachings.  That which tends to a man’s happiness is good, and must be followed, and the contrary shunned as evil.  So far so good.  But the practical application of the doctrine is fraught with mischief.  Cribbed, cabined, and confined, by rank Materialism, within the short space between birth and death, the Utilitarians’ scheme of happiness is merely a deformed torso, which cannot certainly be considered as the fair goddess of our devotion.

The only scientific basis of morality is to be sought for in the soul-consoling doctrines of Lord Buddha or Sri Sankaracharya.  The starting-point of the “pantheistic” (we use the word for want of a better one) system of morality is a clear perception of the unity of the one energy operating in the manifested Cosmos, the grand result which it is incessantly striving to produce, and the affinity of the immortal human spirit and its latent powers with that energy, and its capacity to cooperate with the one life in achieving its mighty object.