tion of their happier
posterity. This is the new gospel: _Pauperes evangelizantur_--"Good
news for the poor." [14] "Progress and not happiness" is the end we are
told to make for, over and over again; but, progress towards what, is
never explained, nor is any basis for this duty assigned. Indeed, duty
means nothing for Mr. Laing but an inherited instinct, which if we
choose to disobey or if we happen not to possess, who shall blame us or
talk to us of "oughts"?

And now to consider more closely the grounds of Mr. Laing's very
cheerful view of a world in which, for all we know, there is no soul, no
God, and certainly no faith. Since of the two former we know and can
know nothing, we must build our happiness, our morality, our "religion,"
on a basis whereof they form no part. He believes that morality will be
able to hold its own distinct, not only from all belief in revelation,
in a personal God, and in a spiritual soul, but in spite of a philosophy
which by tracing the origin of moral judgments to mere physical laws of
hereditary transmission of experienced utilities, robs them of all
authority other than prudential, and convicts them of being illusory so
far as they seem to be of higher than human origin.

Herein, as usual, he treads in the steps of Professor Huxley, "the
greatest living master of English prose" (though why his mastery of
prose should add to his weight as a philosopher, we fail to see). "Such
ideas _evidently_ come from education, and are not the results either of
inherited instinct [15] or of supernatural gift.... Given a being with
man's brain, man's hands, and erect stature, _it is easy to see_ how ...
rules of conduct ... must have been formed and fixed by successive
generations, according to the Darwinian laws." [16]

He tells us: "We may read the Athanasian Creed less, but we practise
Christian charity more in the present than in any former age." [17]
"Faith has diminished, charity increased." [18]

Of moral principles, he says: "Why do we say that ... they carry
conviction with them and prove themselves?... Still, there they are, and
being what they are ... it requires no train of reasoning or laboured
reflection to make us _feel_ that 'right is right,' and that it is
_better_ for ourselves and others to act on such precepts ... rather
than to reverse these rules and obey the selfish promptings of animal
nature." [19] "It is _clearly_ our highest wisdom to follow right, not
from selfish calc