CHAP. XIIL] CONSEQUENCES. 411 



But the question is how to influence the will towards a 

 good action painful to the performer, and for which he sees 

 no prospect of present or future advantage to himself. Mr. 

 Lewes admits* the impotence of his philosophy in this 

 matter. He says : &quot; If a man is insensible to the welfare of 

 others, we can no more convince him he ought to feel for 

 them than we can convince the blind man that he ought to 

 see the glories of colour.&quot; Why should such a one try to 

 acquire an inclination to good which he does not now possess ? 

 We are rational beings, and clearly see that that which gives 

 us happiness is worthy of regard and pursuit. The Agnostic 

 philosopher, the disciple of Spencer, Huxley, Lewes, Mill, or 

 Bain, who should really simply deprive himself of a pleasure, 

 would be acting irrationally. If he felt pleasure in the self- 

 denying action, he would of course naturally, and rationally 

 on his own principles, perform it, but certainly not if he felt 

 no such pleasure ; if he then did it, he would simply be a fool. 

 Let us grant for argument s sake that moral perception is 

 really but the inherited naturally selected tendency to benefit 

 one s tribe. Can any rational man be expected, as soon as 

 he awakes to a sense of the delusion he has been under, not 

 to regulate his actions accordingly ? His rational nature 

 cannot but despise (avowedly or secretly) modes of action 

 which have no intelligible basis. And this remark applies 

 to the humanitarian religion, which would have us toil, not 

 for any happiness to ourselves or those dear to us (another 

 form of self-gratification), but for a remote posterity which is 

 to nourish for an instant before the great final lapse into 

 annihilation of all mankind. On this matter Mr. Mott well 

 observes :f 



&quot; The hope of progress, to have any powerful influence upon us, 

 must be the hope of something in which we ourselves, or those who 

 are really dear to us, can share ; not the hope that a higher race of 

 beings will inhabit the earth long after we have done with it. If I 

 heard that the Emperor of China was a much better and nobler being 

 than myself, I do not feel that I should be much elated by the news. 



* Problems of Life arid Mind, vol. i. p. 457. 

 t Origin of Savage Life, p. 43. 



