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.

CHAPTER V.

LOVE AS A TEST OF GOODNESS.

[Greek:  Erota de, ton tyrannon andron, Ton tas Aphroditas Philtaton thalamon Kledouchon, ou sebizomen, Perthonta.]—­Euripides.

I will again re-state, in other words than my own, the theory we are now going to test by the actual facts of life. ‘The assertion,’ says Professor Huxley, ’that morality is in any way dependent on certain philosophical problems, produces the same effect on my mind as if one should say that a man’s vision depends on his theory of sight, or that he has no business to be sure that ginger is hot in his mouth, unless he has formed definite views as to the nature of ginger.’  Or, to put the matter in slightly different language, the sorts of happiness, we are told, that are secured to us by moral conduct are facts, so far as regards our own consciousness of them, as simple, as constant and as universal, as is the perception of the outer world secured to us by our eyesight, or as the sensation formed on the palate by the application of ginger to it.

Love, for instance, according to this view, is as simple a delight for men in its highest forms as it is for animals in its lowest.  What George Eliot calls ‘the treasure of human affection’ depends as little for its value on any beliefs outside itself as does the treasure of animal appetite; and just as no want of religious faith can deprive the animals of the last, so no want of religious faith can deprive mankind of the first.  It will remain a stable possession to us, amid the wreck of creeds, giving life a solemn and intense value of its own.  It will never fail us as a sure test of conduct.  Whatever guides us to this treasure we shall know is moral; whatever tends to withdraw us from it we shall know is immoral.