There are two characteristics in men, for instance, which, though they undoubtedly do exist, the positive system requires to be indefinitely magnified—­the imagination, and unselfishness.  The work of the imagination is to present to the individual consciousness the remote ends to which all progress is to be directed; and the desire to work for these is, on the positive supposition, to conquer all mere personal impulses.  Now men have already had an end set before them, in the shape of the joys of heaven, which was far brighter and far more real to them than these others can ever be; and yet the imagination has so failed to keep this before them, that its small effect upon their lives is a commonplace with the positivists themselves.  How then can these latter hope that their own pale and distant ideal will have a more vivid effect on the world than that near and glowing one, in whose place they put it?  Will it incite men to virtues to which heaven could not incite them? or lure them away from vices from which hell-fire would not scare them?  Before it can do so, it is plain that human nature must have completely changed, and its elements have been re-mixed, in completely new proportions.  In a state of things where such a result was possible, a man would do a better day’s work for a penny to be given to his unborn grandson, than he would now do for a pound to be paid to himself at sunset.

For argument’s sake, however, let us suppose such a change possible.  Let us suppose the imagination to be so developed that the remote end of progress—­that happier state of men in some far off century—­is ever vividly present to us as a possibility we may help to realise.  Another question still remains for us.  To preserve this happiness for others, we are told, we must to a large extent sacrifice our own.  Is it in human nature to make this sacrifice?  The positive moralists assure us that it is, and for this reason.  Man, they say, is an animal who enjoys vicariously with almost as much zest as in his own person; and therefore to procure a greater pleasure for others makes him far happier than to procure a less one for himself.  In this statement, as I have observed in an earlier chapter, there is no doubt a certain general truth; but how far it will hold good in particular instances depends altogether on particular circumstances.  It depends on the temperament of the person who is to make the sacrifice, on the nature of his feelings towards the person for whom he is to make it, and on the proportion between the pleasure he is to forego himself, and the pleasure he is to secure for another.  Now if we consider human nature as it is, and the utmost development of it that on positive grounds is possible, the conditions that can produce the requisite self-sacrifice will be found to be altogether wanting.  The future we are to labour for, even when viewed in its brightest light, will only excel the present in having fewer miseries.  So far as its happiness goes it will