"COWARDLY AGNOSTICISM." 239 



It does not mean merely that on utilitarian grounds the conduct in 

 question can be defended as tending to certain beneficent results. 

 This conclusion would be indeed barren and useless. It would 

 merely amount to saying that some people would be happier if 

 other people would for their sake consent to be miserable ; or that 

 men would be happier as a race if their instincts and impulses 

 were different from " what they always have been and probably 

 ever will be." When we say that certain conduct ought to be fol- 

 lowed, we do not mean that its ultimate results can be shown to 

 be beneficial to other people, but that they can be exhibited as 

 desirable to the people to whom the conduct is recommended — 

 and not only as desirable, but as desirable in a pre-eminent degree 

 — desirable beyond all other results that are immediately bene- 

 ficial to themselves. Now the positivists, or any other believers 

 in the destinies of humanity, absurd as their beliefs may be, still 

 have in their beliefs a means by which, theoretically, duty could 

 be thus recommended. According to them, our sympathy with 

 others is so keen, and the future in store for our descendants is so 

 satisfying, that we have only to think of this future and we shall 

 burn with a desire to work for it. But Prof. Huxley, and those 

 who agree with him, utterly reject both of these suppositions. 

 They say, and very rightly, that our sympathies are limited ; and 

 that the blissful future, which it is supposed will appeal to them, 

 is moonshine. The utmost, then, in the way of objective results, 

 that any of us can accomplish by following the path of duty, is 

 not only little in itself, but there is no reason for supposing that 

 it will contribute to anything great. On the contrary, it will 

 only contribute to something which, as a whole, is " unutterably 

 saddening." 



Let us suppose, then, an individual with two ways of life open 

 to him — the way of ordinary self-indulgence, and the way of pain, 

 effort, and self-sacrifice. The first seems to him obviously the 

 most advantageous ; but he has heard so much fine talk in favor 

 of the second, that he thinks it at least worth considering. He 

 goes, we will suppose, to Prof. Huxley, and asks to have it dem- 

 onstrated that this way of pain is preferable. Now what answer 

 to that could Prof. Huxley make — he, or any other agnostic who 

 agrees with him ? He has made several answers. I am going to 

 take them one by one ; and while doing to each of them, as I 

 hope, complete justice, to show that they are not only absolutely 

 and ridiculously impotent to prove what is demanded of them, but 

 they do not even succeed in touching the question at issue. 



One of the answers hardly needs considering, except to show 

 to what straits the thinker must be put who uses it. A man, says 

 Prof. Huxley, ought to choose the way of pain and duty, because 

 it conduces in some small degree to the good of others ; and to do 



