DARWINISM AND DIVINITY. 201 



in order to save our police-rates in this. But that doctrine, though it 

 has been preached with amazing emphasis, has not been found to be, 

 on the whole, very edifying. It may serve to remind us that even a 

 belief in immortality may be made as degrading as the grossest forms 

 of materialism. It may convert religion into a specially clever form 

 of selfishness, and take the grace out of the Christian character. The 

 persons who call themselves spiritualists in the present day sometimes 

 claim to be providing an excellent substitute for our old superstitions. 

 The objection which one really feels to them is not so much that they 

 are misled by a contemptible juggle, but that they encourage a kind 

 of prurient religiosity which is inexpressibly revolting. What they 

 really try to persuade us is, not that man has a soul which may be ele- 

 vated far above our earthly wants and longings, but that there is a 

 set of invisible beings Avho walk about this world playing tricks with 

 tables and talking nonsense, to which the twaddle of the Yankee 

 young ladies in " Martin Chuzzlewit " is refined and elevating. Their 

 so-called spirits are of the earth, earthy ; and it would be more satisfac- 

 tory to believe that at death we became parts of the ocean and the 

 air that we formed part of the raw material from which, in the course 

 of the ages, new sentient and thinking beings may be evolved, than 

 that we sank into the likeness of a set of stupid hobgoblins, playing 

 conjuring tricks for the amusement of fools. Gross as some such doc- 

 trines may be, they may also be cited for another purpose. Men are 

 virtuous, it is sometimes said, because they believe in hell. Is not this 

 an inversion of the proper order of thought ? Should we not rather 

 say that men have believed in hell because they were virtuous ? There 

 has been so general a belief that vice was degrading, and was to be 

 discouraged by the strongest possible motives, that even the material 

 part of mankind have exhausted their fancy in devising the most elab- 

 orate sentiments to express the horror with which they regarded it. 

 It is painful to dwell upon the pictures of hideous anguish which the 

 perturbed imaginations of past generations have conjured up and re- 

 garded as the penalties which the merciful Creator had in store for 

 impei-fect creatures placed in a state where their imperfections could 

 not fail to lead them into error; but there is this much of comfort 

 about it, that at least those ghastly images were the reflections of the 

 horror with which all that was best in them revolted against moral 

 evil. It is needless to say how easily those conceptions might be turned 

 to the worst purposes, and religion itself be made an instrument not 

 only for restraining the intellects, but for lowering the consciences of 

 mankind. For our present purpose, it is enough to remark that a 

 Bimilar reflection may convince us that, whatever changes of opinion 

 may be in store for us, we need not fear that any scientific conclusions 

 can permanently lower our views of man's duty here. The belief in 

 immortality, diffused throughout the world, was not, more than any 

 other belief, valuable simply on its own account. It was valuable be- 



