and in its most
typical forms, found where the restraints of religion have proved too
irksome to be tolerated. Before arguing in the abstract that morality
is independent of religion, and will be advanced by its abandonment, it
would perhaps be better to observe the average, concrete case of the
man who has cut himself adrift from religious beliefs and influences;
then it will be time to decide whether we should like to see the
experiment tried on a national scale. It is easy to theorise _in
vacuo_; in practice we are well aware that without the sanctions and
the guardianship of religion morality tends to sink to the level where
the accepted motto is the hedonist's "Let us eat and drink and be
merry, for to-morrow we die."

{181}

But at this point another objection will be raised; "surely," it is
said, "we do not seriously maintain that men are kind to their
families, honest in their every-day transactions, truthful in speech,
and so forth, merely because they believe that to do so is to act in
accordance with Divine injunction, and that if this belief were
suddenly destroyed we should be reduced to moral chaos." But this
argument, so frequently met with in this connection, misapprehends the
real issue. We do not dispute that the elements of moral conduct begin
to be inculcated wherever there is any social life at all. Where there
is any living together, complete selfishness is impossible; there must
come into being a rough law of give-and-take, a recognition of mutual
rights to be respected, a certain loyalty from the individual towards
the tribe, which in turn befriends and defends each of its members.
Quite a number of rudimentary virtues are thus developed by the force
of public opinion, which cannot tolerate flagrantly anti-social acts
from one member of the community towards the rest; murder, violence,
theft, false witness--these and the like offences are suppressed with a
strong hand, without the need of a special supernatural revelation to
decree "Thou shalt not." To be brief, there is no doubt that this
social pressure is powerful enough to insist upon behaviour which will
regulate most of the ordinary relationships of life in a fairly {182}
satisfactory manner--_i.e._, relationships between equals or members of
the same community. The latter is a highly important qualification;
where purely natural sanctions obtain, equal rights might be enjoyed by
all _bona fide_ members of the tribe, but the same