382 THE FUTURE OF RELIGION AND MORALS. 



1 



tionists, that all our actions without exception are deter- 

 mined by the interaction of natural forces resident 

 within the body, which, in the last analysis of the 

 materialist, are physical and chemical forces, blindly at 

 work, however orderly may be at times the results of 

 their action, forces over which, as such, we can have no 

 sort of control ; when we are told that man is the sub- 

 ject essentially of mechanical, which are exclusive of 

 moral, laws, the universal authority of the first leaving 

 no space for the operation of the second ; when we are 

 assured that our character is given to us and not made 

 by us, and that, in a word, there is no ego or moral 

 subject by and through which we possess a moral 

 freedom and initiative, or can be made responsible beings, 

 but instead of it a collection of natural forces in a tem- 

 porary connection with the material organization, whose 

 interactions really determine all resulting actions, as 

 well as volitions, emotions, and thoughts. In a word, 

 and to sum up the indictment, when men discover that 

 the only actions in a real sense obligatory on them, are 

 those where the external force of law or opinion can be 

 brought to coerce them, as they will not be slow to 

 gather from the evolution ethics ; and when they further 

 learn from our new atomist and materialist philosophers, 

 that even with respect to these few the action that 

 finally takes place will be determined by natural and 

 physical forces in any case, thus absolving them from 

 all consequences of the decision ; should they put this 

 double doctrine together which the men of science are 

 everywhere inculcating, there will not be much space 

 left for that morality or conduct which an influential 

 writer has maintained should cover at least three-fourths 

 of life,* and which, on any reckoning other than the 

 scientific, should extend to a very large proportion of it. 



* Matthew Arnold, Literature and Dogma, p. 15. 





