XXI WHY LIVE A MORAL LIFE ? 377 



from pressing the electric button which would at once 

 destroy some unknown millionaire and make the agent of 

 his destruction the honoured inheritor of his wealth. 



It is under circumstances analogous to the last- 

 mentioned case that we can alone have a real test of the 

 efficiency of any alleged sanction for morality. When a 

 man can greatly benefit himself by an act which he believes 

 can never be known, and which will, perhaps, only slightly 

 injure others — as by destroying a will of whose existence 

 no other person is aware — no belief in the general 

 principle that honesty is the best policy can be depended 

 on to secure a strictly moral line of conduct. Why, in 

 fact, should a man give up what he knows will ensure 

 freedom from anxiety, and from a constant and laborious 

 struggle for bare existence, and afford him the means of 

 living a pleasurable and luxurious life — the only life in 

 which he has any belief — and all for the sake of a general 

 principle which the society around him does not, as a rule, 

 act upon? Why should he thus injure himself and his 

 own family in order to benefit strangers of whom he knows 

 nothing ? Of course there are many men, without either 

 religion or any formulated ethical principles, who would 

 not hesitate a moment in such a case, because their 

 natural sentiments of right and justice, enforced by 

 constant association with men of honour and morality, 

 would render the strict line of moral action natural and 

 easy to them ; but with such men we have, so far as the 

 present discussion is concerned, nothing to do. 



For these reasons, it seems to me that the Rationalist 

 or Agnostic has no adequate motive for living a moral life, 

 except so far as he is influenced by public opinion and by 

 a belief that, generally, it pays best to do so. But neither 

 of these influences is of the least value, either in ex- 

 ceptional cases of temptation, or in those very common 

 circumstances when the usual actions of the society in 

 which a man lives are not justified by morality; as in the 

 innumerable adulterations, falsehoods, and deceptions so 

 common in trade that it has been even asserted that no 

 thoroughly honest manufacturer or tradesman can make a 

 living. 



