from London in a day.  Were this feat a possible one, they might no doubt each do their best to help the others to accomplish it.  But if it were beyond the power of each singly, they would not accomplish it as a body, by the whole ten leaving Charing Cross together, and each of them walking one tenth of the way.  The distance they could all walk would be no greater than the distance they could each walk.  In the same way the value of human life, as a whole, depends on the capacities of the individual human being, as an enjoying animal.  If these capacities be great, we shall be eager in our desire to gratify them—­certainly for ourselves, and perhaps also for others; and this second desire may perhaps be great enough to modify and to guide the first.  But unless these capacities be great, and the means of gratifying them definite, our impulses on our own behalf will become weak and sluggish, whilst those on behalf of others will become less able to control them.

It will be apparent farther from this, that just as happiness, unless some distinct positive quality, gains nothing as an end of action, either in value or distinctness, by a mere diffusion in the present—­by an extension, as it were, laterally—­so will it gain nothing further by giving it another dimension, and by prospectively increasing it in the future.  We must know what it is first, before we know whether it is capable of increase.  Apart from this knowledge, the conception of progress and the hope of some brighter destiny can add nothing to that required something, which, so far as sociology can define it for us, we have seen to be so utterly inadequate.  Social conditions, it is true, we may expect will go on improving; we may hope that the social machinery will come gradually to run more smoothly.  But unless we know something positive to the contrary, the outcome of all this progress may be nothing but a more undisturbed ennui or a more soulless sensuality.  The rose-leaves may be laid more smoothly, and yet the man that lies on them may be wearier or more degraded.

To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow Creeps in this petty pace from day to day; And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death.

This, for all that sociology can inform us to the contrary, may be the lesson really taught us by the positive philosophy of progress.

But what the positivists themselves learn from it, is something very different.  The following verses are George Eliot’s: 

Oh may I join the choir invisible Of those immortal dead who live again In lives made better by their presence.  So To live is heaven....  To make undying music in the world, Breathing us beauteous order that controls With growing sway the growing life of man.  So we inherit that sweet purity For which we struggled, groaned, and agonised With widening retrospect, that bred despair....  That better self shall live till human time Shall fold its