2 4 o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



good to others ought to be his predominant desire, or, in other 

 words, his religion. But the very fact in human nature that 

 makes the question at issue worth arguing, is the fact that men 

 naturally do not desire the good of others, or, at least, desire it in 

 a very lukewarm way ; and every consideration which the posi- 

 tivist school advance to make the good of others attractive and 

 interesting to ourselves Prof. Huxley dismisses with what we may 

 call an uproarious contempt. If, then, we are not likely to he 

 nerved to our duty by a belief that duty done tends to produce 

 and hasten a change that shall really make the whole human lot 

 beautiful, we are not likely to be nerved to it by the belief that 

 its utmost possible result will be some partial and momentary 

 benefit to a portion of " a wilderness of apes." The positivist 

 says to the men of the present day : " Work hard at the founda- 

 tion of things social ; for on these foundations one day will arise 

 a glorious edifice." Prof. Huxley tells them to work equally 

 hard, only he adds that the foundation will never support any- 

 thing better than pig-sties. His attempt, then, on social grounds, 

 to make duty binding, and give force to the moral imperative, is 

 merely a fragment of Mr. Harrison's system, divorced from any- 

 thing that gave it a theoretical meaning. Prof. Huxley has shat- 

 tered that system against the hard rock of reality, and this is one 

 of the pieces which he has picked up out of the mire. 



The social argument, then, we may therefore put aside, as good 

 perhaps for showing what duty is, but utterly useless for creating 

 any desire to do it. Indeed, to render Prof. Huxley justice, it is 

 not the argument on which he mainly relies. The argument, or 

 rather the arguments, on which he mainly relies have no direct 

 connection with things social at all. They seek to create a relig- 

 ion, or to give a meaning to duty, by dwelling on man's connec- 

 tion, not with his fellow-men, but with the universe, and thus de- 

 veloping in the individual a certain ethical self-reverence, or rath- 

 er, perhaps, preserving his existing self -reverence from destruc- 

 tion. How any human being who pretends to accurate thinking 

 can conceive that these arguments would have the effect desired 

 — that they would either tend in any way to develop self -rever- 

 ence of any kind, or that this self -reverence, if developed, could 

 connect itself with practical duty — passes my comprehension. In- 

 fluential and eminent men, however, declare that such is their 

 opinion ; and for that reason the arguments are worth analyzing. 

 Mr. Herbert Spencer is here in almost exact accord with Prof. 

 Huxley ; we will therefore begin by referring to his way of stat- 

 ing the matter. 



" We are obliged," he says, " to regard every phenomenon as a 

 manifestation of some power by which we are acted on ; though 

 omnipresence is unthinkable, yet, as experience discloses no bounds 



