238 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



this question let us pause for a moment, and, with Prof. Huxley's 

 help, let us make ourselves quite clear what duty is. I have 

 already shown that it differs from a passive obedience to exter- 

 nal laws, in being a voluntary and active obedience to a law that 

 is internal ; but its logical aim is analogous — that is to say, the 

 good of the community, ourselves included. Prof. Huxley de- 

 scribes it thus — " to devote one's self to the service of humanity, 

 including intellectual and moral self-culture under that name " ; 

 " to pity and help all men to the best of one's ability " ; " to be 

 strong and patient," " to be ethically pure and noble " ; and to push 

 our devotion to others " to the extremity of self-sacrifice." All 

 these phrases are Prof. Huxley's own. They are plain enough in 

 themselves ; but, to make what he means yet plainer, he tells us 

 that the best examples of the duty he has been describing are to 

 be found among Christian martyrs and saints, such as Catherine 

 of Sienna, and above all in the ideal Christ — " the noblest ideal 

 of humanity," he calls it, " which mankind has yet worshiped." 

 Finally, he says that " religion, properly understood, is simply the 

 reverence and love for [this] ethical ideal, and the desire to realize 

 that ideal in life which every man ought to feel." That man 

 " ought " to feel this desire, and " ought " to act on it, " is," he 

 says, " surely indisputable," and " agnosticism has no more to do 

 with it than it has with music or painting." 



Here, then, we come to something at last which Prof. Huxley, 

 despite all his doubts, declares to be certain — to a conclusion which 

 agnosticism itself, according to his view, admits to be " indisput- 

 able." Agnosticism, however, as he has told us already, lays it 

 down as a " fundamental axiom " that no conclusions are indis- 

 putable but such as are "demonstrated or demonstrable." The 

 conclusion, therefore, that we ought to do our duty, and that we 

 ought to experience what Prof. Huxley calls "religion," is evi- 

 dently a conclusion which, in his opinion, is demonstrated or 

 demonstrable with the utmost clearness and cogency. Before, 

 however, inquiring how far this is the case, we must state the 

 conclusion in somewhat different terms, but still in terms which 

 we have Prof. Huxley's explicit warrant for using. Duty is a 

 thing which men in general, "as they always have been, and prob- 

 ably ever will be," have lamentably failed to do, and to do which 

 is very difficult, going as it does against some of the strongest and 

 most victorious instincts of our nature. Prof. Huxley's conclu- 

 sion, then, must be expressed thus : " We ought to do something 

 which most of us do not do, and which we can not do without a 

 severe and painful struggle, often involving the extremity of self- 

 sacrifice." 



And now, such being the case, let us proceed to this crucial ques- 

 tion — What is the meaning of the all-important word " ought " ? 



