.
Ordinary men, the huge majority at the present stage of evolution, need
either compulsion or inspiration, otherwise they will not control their
animal nature, they will not sacrifice an immediate pleasure to a
permanent increase of happiness, they will not sacrifice personal gain
to the common good. The least developed of these are almost entirely
influenced by fear of personal pain and wish for personal pleasure; they
will not put their hand into the fire, because they know that fire
burns, and no one accuses them of a "low motive" because they do not
burn themselves; religion shows them that the results of the disregard
of moral and mental law work out in suffering after death as well as
before it, and that the results of obedience to such laws similarly work
out in post-mortem pleasure. It thus supplies a useful element in the
early stages of moral development.

At a higher stage, love of God and the wish to "please Him" by leading
an exemplary life is a motive offered by religion, and this inspires to
purity and to self-sacrifice; again, this is no more ignoble than the
wish to please the father, the mother, the friend. Many a lad keeps pure
to please his mother, because he loves her. So religious men try to live
nobly to please God, because they love Him. At a higher stage yet, the
good of the people, the good of the race, of humanity in the future,
acts as a potent inspiration. But this does not touch the selfish lower
types. Hence Utility fails as a compelling power with the majority, and
is insufficient as motive. Add to this the radical fault that it does
not place morality on a universal basis, the happiness of _all_,
that it disregards the happiness of the minority, and its unsatisfactory
nature is seen. It has much of truth in it; it enters as a determining
factor into all systems of ethics, even where nominally ignored or
directly rejected; it is a better basis in theory, though a worse one in
practice, than either Revelation or Intuition, but it is incomplete.
We must seek further for a solid basis of morality.

* * * * *

IV

EVOLUTION

We come now to the sure basis of morality, the bedrock of Nature,
whereon Morality may be built beyond all shaking and change, built as a
Science with recognised laws, and in a form intelligible and capable of
indefinite expansion. Evolution is recognised as the method of Nature,
her method in all her realms, and according to