372 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



that the best will be made of it by studying and conforming to 

 the conditions on which happiness depends — the conditions that 

 make for the general improvement of life, physical and social. 

 To speak plainly, it seems to us a very mean business for those 

 who occupy positions of vantage in this world to preach compen- 

 sation in another world to their less favorably situated brethren, 

 in order to make them contented with their lot here. The sooner 

 the calculations of all men are placed on a present-world basis, 

 the better it will be for every important human interest. 



But we are told that, not infrequently, " with religion moral- 

 ity also disappears " ; inasmuch as " science, when reduced to 

 material observation, can only know what is, not what ought to 

 be/' What is meant by reducing science to " material observa- 

 tion " ? Science, we take it, observes all that can be observed ; 

 and we are not aware of any proposition to cut science off from 

 any field in which observation is possible. If science — in the 

 broadest sense — can not teach us what ought to be, what can ? 

 The fact is, that " what ought to be " depends in the most inti- 

 mate manner on what is ; so that, the more perfectly one knows 

 what is, the more clearly he discerns what ought to be. Let any 

 intelligent man examine himself, and say whether any sense of 

 obligation he has does not directly result from some knowledge 

 he possesses of what is. " The denial of the spirituality of the 

 soul," says our philosopher, " uproots all reasonable motives for 

 being just and honest." But supposing that one religiously re- 

 frains from either affirming or denying a proposition the terms 

 of which he can not understand, is there any obstacle to his being 

 just and honest ? We trow not ; and this attitude of mind, we 

 fancy, is that which characterizes most thinkers of the Darwinian 

 or evolutionist school. But why any speculative opinion on the 

 nature of " the soul " should stand in the way of anybody's hon- 

 esty, it is hard to understand. If the opinion, whatever it may 

 be, has been honestly arrived at, and is honestly held, that sim- 

 ple fact will be a guarantee to some extent for honesty in other 

 matters. It is not difficult to find people whose views about 

 " the soul " are quite unexceptionable from the orthodox point 

 of view, but whose daily practice is far from exemplifying a 

 high type of honesty and justice. " Duty without God or a 

 future life," we are sententiously informed, " is a very fine word, 

 but it has no meaning whatever." Alas! what meaning has it 

 with many of those who profess the strongest belief in these 

 doctrines ? We should like to ask M. de Laveleye and others 

 who talk in this fashion whether, on the strength of their own 

 experience, they can affirm that theological unbelievers as a class 

 are morally inferior to believers. The fact is, as we believe, that 

 the average of morality in the so-called orthodox world is very 



