Ill 



SCIENCE AND MORALS 145 



" ages of faith " had less scum or less dregs, or even 

 showed a proportionally greater quantity of sound 

 wholesome stuff in the vat. I think it would 

 puzzle Mr. Lilly, or any one else, to adduce con 

 vincing evidence that, at any period of the world's 

 history, there was a more widespread sense of 

 social duty, or a greater sense of justice, or of the 

 obligation of mutual help, than in this England of 

 ours. Ah ! but, says Mr. Lilly, these are all pro 

 ducts of our Christian inheritance ; when Christian 

 dogmas vanish virtue will disappear too, and the 

 ancestral ape and tiger will have full play. But 

 there are a good many people who think it obvious 

 that Christianity also inherited a good deal from 

 Paganism and from Judaism ; and that, if the 

 Stoics and the Jews revoked their bequest, the 

 moral property of Christianity would realise very 

 little. And, if morality has survived the stripping 

 off of several sets of clothes which have been 

 found to fit badly, why should it not be able to 

 get on very well in the light and handy garments 

 which Science is ready to provide ? 



But this by the way. If the diseases of society 

 consist in the weakness of its faith in the existence 

 of the God of the theologians, in a future state, 

 and in uncaused volitions, the indication, as the 

 doctors say, is to suppress Theology and Philo 

 sophy, whose bickerings about things of which 

 they know nothing have been the prime cause 

 and continual sustenance of that evil scepticism 



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