380 THE FUTURE OF RELIGION AND MORALS. 



To specify more precisely the stages of moral decay : 

 if the feeling of the sacredness surrounding the notion 

 of duty ; if the absolutely imperative authority and cha- 

 racter of the mandates of conscience, as insisted on in 

 the Kantian ethics, be once called in question ; and, still 

 more, if the notion of duty should be dissolved by 

 scientific analysis, or the evolution explanation of how it 

 naturally came by slow development through natural 

 selection, not only will the evil-disposed throw over 

 at once all remaining restraint of conscience, if only they 

 can with safety ; not only will the selfish throw down 

 with alacrity the moral burden which science has so 

 much eased from their shoulders, but, what is worse, the 

 arms of the virtuous will begin to grow weary and their 

 hearts to wax faint in the long and losing struggle with 

 the constantly augmenting forces of evil. It is true they 

 will continue to fight, but they will not be able to make 

 way, and their efforts will only serve to delay the general 

 moral decay and final social dissolution, not unaccom- 

 panied by social catastrophes. 



Nor will it suffice to say in deprecation of such appre- 

 hensions that, with respect to many actions, men must 

 continue to feel a moral obligation to do or to refrain ; 

 that the moral imperatives, thou shalt and thou shall 

 not, must continue to be felt by men, whatever account 

 analysis or evolution may give of the genesis of the 

 feelings. For men will reduce the area of this field of 

 felt obligation, and will not allow the feelings to press 

 with inconvenient severity upon them. They will con- 

 tract the domain of morality as they have already con- 

 tracted that of religion. They will reduce the sphere of 

 its prohibitory precepts to the smallest minimum con- 

 sistent with escape from legal punishment or from the 

 unfavourable opinion of those who can hurt them. The 



