To return again, then, to the subject of human love—­we are now in a position to see that, as offered us at present by the positive school of moralists, it cannot, properly speaking, be called a positive pleasure at all, but that, it is still essentially a religious one; and that when the religious element is eradicated, its entire character will change.  It may be, of course, contended that the religious element is ineradicable:  but this is simply either to call positivism an impossibility, or religion an incurable disease.  Here, however, we are touching on a side issue, which I shall by and by return to, but which is at present beside the point.  My aim now is not to argue either that positivism can or cannot be accepted by humanity, but to show what, if accepted, it will have to offer us.  I wish to point out the error, for instance, of such writers as George Eliot, who, whilst denying the existence of any sun-god in the heavens, are yet perpetually adoring the sunlight on the earth; who profess to extinguish all fire on principle, and then offer us boiling water to supply its place; or who, sending love to us as a mere Cassandra, continue to quote as Scripture the prophecies they have just discredited.

Thus far what we have seen is this.  Love as a positive pleasure, if it be ever reduced to such, will be a very different thing from what our positivist moralists at present see it to be.  It will perform none of those functions for which they now look to it.  It will no longer supply them, as now, with any special pinnacle on which human life may raise itself.  The one type of it that is at present on an eminence will sink to the same level as the others.  All these will be offered to us indiscriminately, and our choice between them will have no moral value.  None of the ethical epithets by which these varieties are at present so sharply distinguished from each other will have any virtue left in them.  Morality in this connection will be a word without a meaning.

I have as yet dealt only with one of those resources, which have been supposed to impart to life a positive general value.  This one, however, has been the most important and the most comprehensive of all; and its case will explain that of the others, and perhaps, with but few exceptions, include them.  One or two of these others I shall by and by treat separately; but we will first enquire into the results on life of the change we have been considering already.

FOOTNOTES: 

[15] Mr. A.C.  Swinburne.

[16] Mademoiselle de Maupin, pp. 213-222.  Ed. Paris. 1875.

[17] Mademoiselle de Maupin, p. 223.

[18] Ibid., p. 225.

[19] Mademoiselle de Maupin, p. 222.

[20] Ibid., p. 211.

[21] Dante Gabriel Rosetti.

[22] Aug.  Conf., lib. ix.  In the earlier part of the passage the extreme redundancy of the original has been curtailed somewhat.  In the rendering here given I have to a great extent followed Dr. Pusey.