xvm ETHICS AND IMMORTALITY 339 



no one can foretell : the real objection to doing too much 

 for posterity is, not that posterity has done nothing for 

 us, but the uncertainty as to what the effect on posterity 

 will be. For that depends largely on the character of 

 others, and quisque suos patimur Manes. Each can 

 assume full responsibility for his own actions and his own 

 character alone ; the rest lies largely on the lap of the 

 gods. If, then, you deny the persistence of character, you 

 have denied the real basis of the moral order. 



But, secondly, supposing even that humanity profited by 

 our efforts, how far would this go towards re-establishing 

 the moral order of the world ? If the immortality of the 

 individual be an illusion, surely that of the race is a 

 transparent absurdity. If there is certainty about any 

 prediction of science, it is surely, as I have elsewhere put 

 it, this, that our racial destiny is &quot; to shiver and to starve 

 to death in ever-deepening gloom.&quot; ] The prospective 

 fortunes of the race, then, do not redeem the moral 

 character of the universe. If the view of mechanical 

 science be the whole truth about the universe, the race is 

 of just as little account as the individual ; suns and stars 

 and the hosts of heaven will roll on in their orbits just as 

 steadily and unfeelingly whether we prosper or perish, 

 struggle on or resign ourselves to despair. Cosmically, 

 the earth and all it bears on its surface is of infinitesimal 

 importance : what does it matter then whether any one 

 brood of mites that crawls upon it is better or worse than 

 its successors, any more than whether it laboriously grubs 

 up a few atoms of a shining yellow or of a shining white 

 metal and fights about the ratio ? No ; the worthy 

 people who think that George Eliot s choir invisible can 

 make a noise to compete with the whirl of worlds 

 decidedly delude themselves, and an immortality of 

 influence is no adequate ethical substitute for personal 

 immortality. 



A second objection does not pretend to improve on 

 the ethic of immortality, but criticizes it by descanting on 

 the turpitude of basing morality on fears of Hell and 



1 Riddles of the Sphinx, p. 105, new ed. p. 104. 



