SCIENCE AND ITS ACCUSERS. 371 



for us — relative justice — such justice as will serve our need from 

 day to day. 



Another threat held out is the miserahle condition to which 

 human life would be reduced if faith in a future life should dis- 

 appear — a result that Darwinism is credited with hastening. Let 

 us talk seriously on this subject. If there is evidence of a con- 

 scious life for human beings beyond the grave, Darwinism surely 

 can not overthrow it. It may possibly be that heretofore the 

 doctrine of immortality has been taught on very insufficient 

 grounds, and that Darwinism has so far awakened the popular 

 intelligence that the insufficiency has become apparent; but, if 

 so, Darwinism is not to blame. It is simply a question of repair- 

 ing the breaches in a damaged argument. A true doctrine does 

 not need false supports ; on the contrary, no greater service can 

 be rendered to a true doctrine than to throw it back on its legiti- 

 mate proofs. So far, therefore, as this or any other doctrine is 

 true, Darwinism can only establish it the more firmly by taking 

 away the insecure foundations on which it may provisionally 

 have rested. The question is worth raising, however, whether 

 the invalidation of this theory of a future life — not that we see 

 how Darwinism as such is going to accomplish such a result — 

 would have so disastrous an effect as M. de Laveleye assumes 

 upon human hapj)iness. He imagines some one addressing the 

 toilers of the world, and bidding them, as " there is no compen- 

 sation elsewhere," to raise their heads, "too long bent to the 

 dust beneath the yoke of tyrants and priests." Is it possible that 

 so distinguished a liberal as M, de Laveleye wants to join him- 

 self to tyrants and x^riests in their endeavors to hold down the 

 working-classes by the promise or the lure of " compensation else- 

 where"? Compensation for what? For injustice? But if the 

 next world is to make amends for the injustices of this, then why 

 lament over what the people might do if they rose against the 

 holders of wealth ? At the worst they could only work injustice, 

 and the next world will make amends for all that. "Why should 

 not next-world sauce, that is found so admirably adapted for the 

 laboring-man goose, be equally suitable for the capitalist gan- 

 der ? But if it is not injustice, but merely misery, for which a 

 compensation is to be found in a future life, the lesson to be 

 learned, we presume, is that the miseries of this life are to be 

 endured in a patient spirit, and that no particular effort need be 

 made to redress them here and now. But how all this talk about 

 a future life tends to confuse our ideas and paralyze our activi- 

 ties in dealing with present interests ! Instead of trying to admin- 

 ister an anodyne to those who suffer by holding out promises of 

 future enjoyment, we should be far more disposed to tell them 

 that their right and duty is to make the best of this world; and 



