SCIENCE AND MORALITY. 753 



more than one eighth of a horse-power acting continuously for the 

 twenty-four hours ; or it equals one hundred and eighty-two horse- 

 powers working for one minute. 



But the combustion of carbon does not include the total oxidation 

 within the body ; for, in less degree, hydrogen, sulphur, phosphorus, 

 and iron, are also burned. 



A large part of the energy thus produced is utilized in the unceas- 

 ing labor of the circulation and the respiration. In a year the number 

 of respirations is, in most persons, over nine million ; and one hundred 

 and twenty-five thousand cubic feet of air carried through the lungs 

 purifies at least five thousand tons of blood. Yet, so perfect is the 

 apparatus, that we are almost unconscious of its action, unless warned 

 by disease, or the delicate lining of the air-tubes is irritated by some 

 foreign matter. 



HAS SCIENCE YET FOUND A NEW BASIS FOR 



MORALITY? 



By Professor GOLDWIN SMITH. 



TO ask whether Science has yet found a new basis for morality, or 

 even to answer that question in the negative, is a widely differ- 

 ent thing from saying that morality can not exist without religion. 

 It is still more widely different, if possible, from imputing immoral 

 tendencies to science. No sane being doubts that the tendency of 

 truth of every kind is moral, or that the tendency of falsehood of 

 every kind, if persisted in, is immoral. But we are not bound to ac- 

 cept at once as science everything that is tendered as such by scien- 

 tific men on subjects with which, perhaps, they have not long been 

 familiar, and at a time when the excitement created by great discov- 

 eries is sure to give birth to a certain proportion of chimeras. If we 

 were, we should have to accept the theory of the automaton man, 

 which has been pressed upon us by the very highest scientific author- 

 ity with a confidence bordering on the despotic, and that of the " citi- 

 zen atoms," which, according to Haeckel, while diffused through 

 space, concerted among themselves the structure of the world. Nor 

 in any case can we allow ourselves to be hurried headlong by the cur- 

 rent of new opinion into negative any more than into positive conclu- 

 sions ; above all, when the abjuration of a belief involves not merely 

 a change in treatises of philosophy, but the greatest practical conse- 

 quences, such as the abolition of religion. For abolished religion 

 ought to be, and must be, as soon as it is proved to be founded on 

 falsehood ; the proposal of freethinkers, like Renan, to keep up the 

 system as the means of restraining the vulgar and protecting the re- 

 fined enjoyments of the cultivated, being no less shallow and, in an age 

 vol. xx. 48 



