" COWARDLY AGNOSTICISMS 233 



be derived altogether from the shifting pains or pleasures which 

 go to make up our momentary span of life, or the life of our race, 

 which in the illimitable history of the All is an incident just as 

 momentary. 



Now supposing the importance and interest which life has thus 

 lost can not be replaced in any other way, will life really have 

 suffered any practical change and degradation ? To this question 

 our agnostics with one consent say Yes. Prof. Huxley says that 

 if theologic denial leads us to nothing but materialism, "the 

 beauty of a life may be destroyed/' and " its energies paralyzed " ; * 

 and that no one, not historically blind, " is likely to underrate the 

 importance of the Christian faith as a factor in human history, 

 or to doubt that some substitute genuine enough and worthy 

 enough to replace it will arise." f Mr. Spencer says the same thing 

 with even greater clearness : while, as for Mr. Harrison, it is need- 

 less to quote from him ; for half of what he has written is an am- 

 plification of these statements. 



It is admitted, then, that life, in some very practical sense, will 

 be ruined if science, having destroyed theologic religion, can not 

 put, or allow to be put, some other religion in place of it. But we 

 must not content ourselves with this general language. Life will 

 be ruined, we say. Let us consider to what extent and how. 

 There is a good deal in life which obviously will not be touched at 

 all — that is to say, a portion of which is called the moral code. 

 Theft, murder, some forms of lying and dishonesty, and some 

 forms of sexual license, are inconsistent with the welfare of any 

 society ; and society, in self-defense, would still condemn and pro- 

 hibit them, even supposing it had no more religion than a tribe of 

 gibbering monkeys. But the moral code thus retained would con- 

 sist of prohibitions only, and of such prohibitions only as could be 

 enforced by external sanctions. Since, then, this much would sur- 

 vive the loss of religion, let us consider what would be lost along 

 with it. Mr. Spencer, in general terms, has told us plainly enough. 

 What would be lost, he says, is, in the first place, " our ideas of 

 goodness, rectitude, or duty," or, to use a single word, " morality." 

 This is no contradiction of what has just been said, for morality is 

 not obedience, enforced or even instinctive, to laws which have an 

 external sanction, but an active co-operation with the spirit of 

 such laws, under pressure of a sanction that resides in our own 

 wills. But not only would morality be lost, or this desire to work 

 actively for the social good ; there would be lost also every higher 

 conception of what the social good or of what our own good is ; 

 and men would, as Mr. Spencer says, " become chiefly absorbed in 



* " Lay Sermons, Addresses, and Reviews," p. 127. 



f "Agnosticism," "Nineteenth Century," February, 1889, p. 191, and "Popular Science 

 Monthly," April, 1889, p. 773. 



