Here then lies the weak point in the position of the positive moralists, when they hold up such love to us as so supreme a treasure in life.  They observe, and quite correctly, that it is looked upon as a treasure; but the source of its preciousness is something that their system expressly takes from it.  That choice amongst the loves, so solemn and so imperious and yet so tender, which descends like a tongue of flame upon the love it delights to honour; which fixes on a despised and a weak affection, taking it like Elisha from his furrows, or like David from his pastures, setting it above all its fellows, and making it at once a queen and prophetess—­this is a choice that positivism has no power to make; or which, if it makes, it makes only a caprice, or a listless preference.  It does not, indeed, confound pure love with impure, but it sets them on an equal footing; and those who contend that the former under these conditions is intrinsically more attractive to men than the latter, betray a most naive ignorance of what human nature is.  Supposing, for argument’s sake, that to themselves it may be so, this fact is not of the slightest use to them.  It is merely the possession on their part of a certain personal taste, which those who do not share it may regard as disease or weakness, and which they themselves can neither defend nor inculcate.  It is true they may call their opponents hard names if they choose; but their opponents can call them hard names back again; but in the absence of any common standard, the recriminations on neither side can have the least sting in them.  Could, however, any argument on such a matter be possible, it is the devotees of impurity that would have the strongest case; for the pleasures of indulgence are admitted by both sides, while the merits of abstention are admitted by only one.

Let us go back, for instance, in connection with this matter, to what Professor Huxley has told us is the grand result of education.  It leads us away, he says, from ‘the rank and steaming valleys of sense,’ up to the ‘highest good,’ which is ‘discerned by reason,’ ’resting in eternal calm.’  And let us ask him again, what, as uttered by a positivist, these words can by any possibility mean. ’The rank and steaming valleys of sense’!  Why are they rank and steaming?  Or, if they are, why is that any condemnation of them?  Or, if we do condemn them, what else are we to praise?  The entire raw material, not of our pleasures only, but of our knowledge also, is given us, say the positive school, by the senses.  Surely then to condemn the senses must be to condemn life.  Let us imagine Professor Huxley talking in this way to Theophile Gautier.  Let us imagine him frowning grimly at the licentious Frenchman, and urging him with all vehemence to turn to the highest good.  The answer will at once be, ’That is exactly, my dear Professor, what I do turn to.  And, listen,’ he might say—­the following is again a passage