232 HUXLEY 



or evade many of them stronger. In the absence of a 

 clear apprehension of the natural sanctions of these 

 rules, a supernatural sanction was assumed ; and 

 imagination supplied the motives which reason was 

 supposed to be incompetent to furnish. Religion, at 

 first independent of morality, gradually took morality 

 under its protection ;. and the supernaturalists have 

 ever since tried to persuade mankind that the ex- 

 istence of ethics is bound up with that of super- 

 naturalism. 1 



It has been so much the worse for both. For if 

 the ethical code is low, the conception of the god 

 who is assumed to be its author suffers as the ethical 

 ideal advances ; and if the ethics are made dependent 

 upon a theology which becomes discredited, they 

 stand or fall with it. Doubtless, in rude and turbu- 

 lent ages, no small gain accrued through the associa- 

 tion of a humane code of conduct with supernatural 

 dogmas, but the engine of aggrandisement which this 

 put into the hands of sacerdotalism rendered the 

 divorce imperative as society advanced. 



Theological apologists who insist that morality will 

 vanish if their dogmas are exploded, would do well to 

 consider the fact that, in the matter of intellectual 

 veracity, science is already a long way ahead of the 

 Churches ; and that, in this particular, it is exerting 

 an educational influence on mankind of which the 

 Churches have shown themselves utterly incapable. 2 



1 Coll. Essays, v. p. 53., and cf. iv. p. 361. 



2 Coll. Essays, v. p. 142. 



