7ig 
1880.] Analyses of Books. 
children or others dependent upon them to the mercy of the 
world. Such, it may be urged, are the motives which restrain 
the millions from suicide. Granting that the majority of the 
evils under which we groan are remediable, the individual is 
powerless against them. We know that whether we struggle to 
remove them or not they will remain to torment our descendants. 
Nay, so far as can be judged from what has taken place within 
the last half century, there is room to fear that life is becoming 
harder, that the beautiful is growing rarer, and that man has 
less and less time and opportunity to think of truth and good- 
ness. Evolution does not imply that the progressive changes 
taking place are necessarily towards perfeaion. We trace 
instances of degeneration in the structure of animals.. There 
is no reason why a similar phenomenon may not occur in social 
or national life. . 
In the chapter, “ Morality and Religion in the Past, the 
author argues that the two have not been necessarily connected, 
but that religions have often sanctioned and encouraged immo- 
rality, whilst “ every grand onward movement of the religious 
life of the world has been started as a moral protest.” He 
maintains that the origin of goodness is a much more important 
question than the origin of evil. Moral perfection, he thinks, is 
not a condition from which man has fallen, but one towards 
which he must gradually approximate. He believes that “ the 
moral law stands by virtue of its own right, and would stand 
just the same without any regard to the question of immor- 
tality or the discussion between theism and atheism.” He does 
not, however, raise the point brought forward by Mr. S. Tolver 
Preston that the “ dogma of infinitely lasting punishment is 
pradlically tantamount to teaching that the pursuit of vice must 
be infinitely profitable in this life.”* He accepts happiness as 
an end. He protests against the ascetic figment, that suffering 
is something meritorious in itself, and justly pronounces it 
“ everywhere, and always evil, and only to be accepted for a 
larger and a higher good.” He censures the churches for 
having taught that “ if there was no God and no future life the 
way to be happy would be to break all the moral laws, and rush 
into every kind of evil.” But whilst teaching that virtue entails 
its own reward, and is the way to happiness, he guards against 
the error of supposing that its reward will consist in the ordinary 
prizes after which men strive. “ Do not find fault,” he says, 
“ with this universe because righteousness is not paid in green- 
backs or government bonds.” 
Mr. Savage shows that there was a time when polygamy, 
slavery, despotism, were good in comparison with the conditions 
and praaices which they had superseded. He recognises the 
faa that the philosophy of evolution has reconciled and explained 
* Journal of Science, 1880, pp. 448 and 450. 
VOL. II. (THIRD SERIES). 2 Z 
