nd materially
modifies the third.

In the first place, the importance of the moral end is altogether
changed in character. It has nothing in it whatever of the infinite, and
a scientific forecast can already see the end of it.

In the second place, it is nothing absolute, and not being absolute is
incapable of being enforced.

In the third place, its value, such as it is, is measured only by the
_conscious_ happiness that its possession gives us, or the conscious
pains that its loss gives us.

Still it may be contended with plausibility that the moral end, when
once seen, is sufficient to attract us by its own inalienable charm, and
can hold its own independently of any further theories as to its nature
and its universality. It remains now to come to practical life, and see
if this really be so; to see if the pleasures in life that are supposed
the highest will not lose their attractiveness when robbed of the three
characteristics of which the positive theory robs them.

FOOTNOTES:

[11] Vide _Pessimism_, by James Sully.

[12] Professor Clifford; 'Ethics of Belief,' _Contemporary Review_, Jan.
1877.

[13] '_An awful privilege, and an awful responsibility, that we should
help to create a world in which posterity will live!_'--Professor
Clifford.

[14] Goethe, translated by Carlyle.

CHAPTER V.

LOVE AS A TEST OF GOODNESS.

[Greek: Erota de, ton tyrannon andron,
Ton tas Aphroditas
Philtaton thalamon
Kledouchon, ou sebizomen,
Perthonta.]--_Euripides._

I will again re-state, in other words than my own, the theory we are now
going to test by the actual facts of life. '_The assertion_,' says
Professor Huxley, '_that morality is in any way dependent on certain
philosophical problems, produces the same effect on my mind as if one
should say that a man's vision depends on his theory of sight, or that
he has no business to be sure that ginger is hot in his mouth, unless he
has formed definite views as to the nature of ginger_.' Or, to put the
matter in slightly different language, the sorts of happiness, we are
told, that are secured to us by moral conduct are facts, so far as
regards our own consciousness of them, as simple, as constant and as
universal, as is the perception of the outer world secured to us by our
eyesight, or as the sensation formed on the palate by the application of
ginger to it.

Love, for instance, according to this view, is as simple a delight for
men in