340 HUMANISM xvm 



hopes of Paradise. This objection also is urged by many 

 worthy persons ; and I have known some who have been 

 sustained through life by the pride they took in showing 

 that they could be just as moral without knowing why, as 

 they were when they thought their eternal salvation 

 depended on their conduct. But theoretically this objection 

 surely rests on a misconception. The rewards and 

 punishments for conduct are not to be looked upon as 

 motives to conduct, but as the natural results of conduct, 

 inevitable in a morally ordered universe. In an ethical 

 universe, Goodness cannot be associated with persistent 

 misery, because that would be an outrage upon the moral 

 order ; Badness must ultimately involve unhappiness, be 

 cause only such retribution will reaffirm the outraged 

 supremacy of the moral order. Rewards and punishments, 

 then, are but incidents in that completion of the moral 

 life for the sake of which immortality was postulated ; 

 they are not in themselves the sole motives for leading 

 such a life. The very suggestion that they may be 

 supposed to be, on whatever side it is urged, shows an 

 imperfect appreciation of the nature of the moral life, 

 indicative of a coarser moral fibre and of a lower stage 

 of ethical development. 



But we need not on this account entirely condemn 

 this mode of regarding immortality. Fears and hopes of 

 what may happen hereafter may not be the highest 

 motives to morality ; they may enforce as an external 

 sanction what should be an intrinsic conviction ; but they 

 are not therefore valueless. For, if they are effective, 

 they at least accustom men to right conduct, 1 and thus 

 form the basis of sound habit, which is the actual founda 

 tion of all conduct in any case, and the necessary 

 prerequisite for sound reflection upon conduct and the 

 attainment of any higher view of morality. Our moral 

 enthusiasm, therefore, need no more frown upon these 

 lower motives than it need disband the police on the 

 ground that a truly moral community should not need 

 policing. 



1 Cp. pp. 33-5. 



