theories, is for us impregnated with a life that is impregnated with these, and thus their subtle influence pervades it everywhere.  There is no impulse from without which stirs or excites the senses, that does not either bring to us, or send us on to, a something beyond itself.  In each of these pleasures that seems to us so simple, floats a swarm of hopes and memories, like the gnats in a summer twilight.  There is not a sight, a sound, a smell, not a breath from sea or garden, that is not full of them, and on which, busy and numberless, they are not wafted into us.  And each of these volatile presences brings the notions of right and wrong with it; and it is these that make sensuous life tingle with so strange and so elaborate an excitement.  Indirectly then, though not directly, the mere joy in the act of living will suffer from the loss of religion, in the same manner, though perhaps not in the same degree, as the other joys will.  It will not lose its existence, but it will lose zest.  The fabric of its pleasures will of course remain what it ever was; but its brightest inhabitants will have left it.  It will be as desolate as Mayfair in September, or as a deserted college during a long vacation.

We may here pause in passing, to remark on the shallowness of that philosophy of culture, to be met with in certain quarters, which, whilst admitting all that can be said as to the destruction for us of any moral obligation, yet advises us still to profit by the variety of moral distinctions. ‘Each moment,’ says Mr. Pater for instance, ’some form grows perfect in hand or face; some tone on the hills or sea is choicer than the rest; some mood of passion or insight or intellectual excitement, is irresistibly real and attractive for us.’  And thus, he adds, ’while all melts under our feet, we may well catch at any exquisite passion, or any contribution to knowledge, that seems by a lifted horizon to set the spirit free for a moment, or any stirring of the senses, strange dyes, strange flowers, and curious odours, or the work of the artist’s hand, or the face of one’s friend.’  It is plain that this positive teaching of culture is open to the same objections, and is based on the same fallacy, as the positive teaching of morals.  It does not teach us, indeed, to let right and wrong guide us in the choice of our pleasures, in the sense that we should choose the one sort and eschew the other; but teaching us to choose the two, in one sense indifferently, it yet teaches us to choose them as distinct and contrasted things.  It teaches us in fact to combine the two fruits without confusing their flavours.  But in the case of good and evil, as has been seen, this is quite impossible; for good is only good as the thing that ought to be chosen; evil is only evil as the thing that ought not to be chosen; and the only reasons that could justify us in combining them would altogether prevent our distinguishing them.  The teachings of positive culture, in fact,