378 THE FUTURE OF RELIGION AND MORALS. 



we say of them ? What, but that there exists an un- 

 reconciled contradiction between their ethical creed and 

 their own practice ; and that their deeds give the best 

 refutation to their words ? 



2. There are even graver counts in the indictment 

 against the morality of science ; that it tends to dissolve 

 society as well as poison virtue. It is argued that to 

 regard morality as merely a thing of human invention, 

 evolved and perfected by the pressure of the social neces- 

 sities conjointly with the action of natural selection; to 

 consider it as a set of relations really conventional, and 

 necessary only in the sense of being, in great measure, 

 indispensable for the well-being of the average units 

 composing the social whole; to assign to virtue only 

 such a low origin, and to make right and wrong depend 

 only on the uncertain and variable sanctions of external 

 reward and punishment, is, in effect, to destroy virtue 

 and to cut the inmost nerve of virtuous endeavour. The 

 effect of this ethical teaching is to poison virtue by slow 

 degrees and with small doses, even in the virtuous man, 

 who should accept it. As for the generality, the mass 

 of the species, as described by evolution, they will be 

 nothing loth to be free from their old moral bonds and 

 fetters ; nor will they be long in putting in practice the 

 pleasing lesson of their future moral emancipation. The 

 moral yoke of science will indeed be easy, its burden 

 light and almost pleasant. But neither the first nor the 

 final social result which might be predicted with some 

 degree of scientific confidence, from the many examples 

 of history, which show an invariable sequence between 

 moral degeneracy and failing civilization, will be quite 

 so pleasant for the next few generations or for future 

 society. A deluge of immorality, and moral materialism 

 as bad as immorality, will set in as the first result of the 



