54 
but it was the patronage of scepticism and contempt, as valuable 
instruments for imposing on the folly of the vulgar, who were 
too degraded to be capable of worshipping m the temple ot 
truth. A moral influence, founded on falsehood, must have 
been both weak and degrading ; but to himself, and to nnnds 
of corresponding elevation, the popular religious notions a 
become utterly powerless. Nor did he succeed in discovering 
more elevated or influential ones in the place of those which 
he had iustly discarded. In the first place, he was unable to 
discover evidence which could make the belief in the immor- 
tality of man a rational conviction. All his reasonings m 
favour of a belief in a future state were encumbered with in- 
numerable difficulties, and probably no one was more fully 
aware of their inconclusiveness than himself. Even when he 
was disposed to admit it on speculative principles, his doctrine 
of immortality was so closely connected with pantheism as to 
deprive it of all moral force. If man be a portion of deity or 
evolved out of the divine nature, or if evil be inherent m matter 
what becomes of responsibility ? Even when he held a belief 
in the existence of God, his conception of Him contains scarcely 
an element of personality; and where this is wanting, the 
moral force of the idea approximates to zero. A deity con- 
ceived of as an anima mundi, or as coincident with nature, or 
as pure intellect, or as invested with attributes bearing no 
analogy to the moral nature of man, or as existing m a pleroma, 
remote from the universe, is no moral force which can be 
brought to bear on our spiritual being. The philosopher, 
therefore, lost all hold on the- unseen world as a power to act 
on man’s moral nature. As far as man was responsible, he 
was only so to himself, or to society, or to an impersonality 
called the order of nature. The only moral forces with which 
he could act on the mind were those which can be derived 
from the nature of virtue itself and its influence on our present 
happiness. If he adopted the intuitional theory of our moral 
sentiments, he could only urge that holiness ought to be 
practised because it was right, and that self-sacrifice was a 
duty because of its inherent nobleness. _ But what if the mind 
failed to recognize this ? Even when it recognized it, there 
stood in hostile array a mighty force of passion. How was 
this power to be overcome ? In whatever form he presented 
the conception, whether as right reason, or the morally beau- 
tiful, or the subject of praise, or the nobility of self- sacrifice, 
its moral force was substantially the same. If he adopted 
btilitarian views of morality, the only force which he could 
nring to bear on the mind was the only one on which virtue, 
under that system, can be made to rest, that virtuous practice 
is the course best suited to conduce to the happiness of the 
