774 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



a strong inducement or as a strong deterrent. We do not find any- 

 thing that can be relied on to save society from the danger of a moral 

 interregnum. An exaggerated interpretation is not to be put upon 

 that phrase. Society will hold together, and the milkman will go his 

 round. For that, daily needs, habit, human nature, the examples of 

 China and Japan, both of which are agnostic, sufficiently answer. So- 

 ciety has held together during former intervals between the fall of 

 one morality and the rise of another ; but it has been in rather a sorry 

 way. Things have righted, but before they have righted there have 

 been times to which nobody wishes to return. The continuity of his- 

 tory is indisputable ; yet it is not such as to preclude very terrible 

 convulsions ; and surely the doings of nihilism, which in its speculative 

 aspect is clearly a product of the present disturbance of religious and, 

 at the same time, of ethical beliefs, are warning enough of the exist- 

 ence of subterranean fires. Once more, it is not from the personal ten- 

 dencies of the distinguished party which surrounds an intellectual tea- 

 table that we can gather with certainty those of the masses inflamed 

 by fierce passions and goaded by animal wants, or even those of genius 

 itself, like that of Napoleon, in pursuit of selfish aims. That all will 

 be well in the end, theists, at any rate, must implicitly believe ; yet 

 the day of salvation may be distant. 



" It is strange," says Mr. Spencer, " that a notion so abstract as 

 that of perfection, or a certain ideal completeness of nature, should 

 ever have been thought one from which a system of guidance could 

 be evolved." Call the notion abstract, and the remark may be true. 

 But it is certain that a personal type, or supposed type, of perfection, 

 has furnished Christendom with guidance, with a rule of life at all 

 events, up to this time. The sudden disappearance of that type must 

 fill all, except the most serenely scientific minds, with misgivings as 

 to the immediate future, it being admitted by " our great philosopher " 

 that there is nothing to be put in its place. 



There are one or two points which, though not strictly pertinent to 

 the present inquiry, it may not be wholly beside the mark to notice. 

 One of these relates to the theistic notion of morality, which we can 

 not help thinking the author of the " Data " misapprehends, so far as 

 rational theists are concerned. "Religious creeds," he 6ays, "estab- 

 lished and dissenting, all embody the belief that right and wrong are 

 right and wrong simply in virtue of divine enactment." In another 

 passage he represents the religious world as holding that " moral truths 

 have no other origin than the will of God." There is a fallacy in the 

 term " will." A law is not made by the will of the legislator ; it is 

 enforced by his will, but it is made by his nature, moral and intellect- 

 ual, the goodness or badness of which determines its quality and the 

 Balutariness of obedience. Wise advice given by a father to his chil- 

 dren is useful in itself, not merely because he gives it. Moreover, 

 what a rational theist may be said to hold is simply that our moral 



