should dull, or violent passion distort, our feeling. When a vicious impulse has been gratified, and so becomes quiescent, regret, or even remorse, is felt, because the altruistic instincts, no longer silenced by passion, speak once more, and we are dissatisfied with ourselves.

But whilst all morality has its origin in the social affections, these are far from supplying an adequate guidance to conduct. That can be found only in a rational study of the consequences of feelings and acts as affecting public or private welfare-consequences which are not, by any means, always obvious, for we must remember that benevolent inclinations are, in themselves, as blind as the egoistic, and may, in practice, sometimes defeat their own end. The altruistic impulses being supposed duly operative, the question remains-What are the real tendencies of any act or habit in relation to the wellbeing of Humanity, which those impulses set before us as the aim of our action? And this is matter for scientific investigation. Moral precepts are capable of demonstration, as resting on the knowledge of our personal and social nature and the facts of our situation; and convictions founded on that knowledge may be as strong as those based on scientific evidence in other provinces. Such convictions, if early formed and deeply impressed upon the mind, will be able to resist not only the persistent pressure of the selfish instincts, but-what are more dangerous-their sudden and unforeseen assaults.

Whilst the determination of duties is a matter of scientific proof, there may, and perhaps always will, be persons incapable of apprehending, in some instances, the demonstrations which establish moral rules; but under the Positive regime, they will be accepted on similar grounds to those on which, for example, the Earth's double motion is universally recognised. Moral beliefs, in fact, except in simple cases, where their foundations are obvious, will be just and beneficent social prejudices; they will always be demonstrable, but seldom demonstrated. It is not by the teaching of moral theorems that virtue is to be so much promoted as by the direct expansion of the social sentiments, which must, therefore, be developed from the earliest age by all the artifices which a sound philosophy or a sagacious empiricism can suggest. The principal resource will be the cultivation of practical habits; for in the moral art, as in all others, we learn to do things by doing them.

The special feature which distinguishes Positivist Morality is its pervading social character. All moral questions are referred to the well-being of Humanity. The "duties to ourselves," on which moral theorists sometimes dwell, have, as such, no meaning for the Positivist. The duties themselves, which are intended, are indeed real; but they are to be regarded, not from the personal, but from the social, point of view. The corresponding virtues are obligatory, because they adapt us for the better service of

Humanity. Without the practice, for example, of sobriety and continence, we cannot perform our social functions aright. This way of regarding personal morality removes all that is arbitrary in the conduct of our individual lives, and leads us, in contemplating particular acts, even such as might at first seem indifferent, to look beyond them to the habits they form and the capacities they develop, which are generally more important than their immediate consequences. And we are thus taught, not only to condemn undue self-indulgence, but to disapprove (whilst respecting the motives which sometimes dictate them) such excessive austerities as weaken forces which ought to be husbanded for social uses.

Two further remarks are needed for the complete elucidation of Positivist Morals.

I.

1. "Right" and "Wrong are commonly regarded as qualities inherent in actions, whatever the vague word "inherent" may be supposed to mean. But it is plain that these qualities have relation to the contemplative and meditative action of an observing intellect, as well as to the sympathetic sentiment of an affective nature. This consideration, whilst it renders it impossible for us to speak of Morality as "eternal" and "immutable," does not at all make it either arbitrary or dependent on the peculiarities of the individual. Its fundamental rules of conduct are indeed relative; but it is to collective Humanity that they are relative,

and they are, therefore, valid so long as the essential nature and situation of man remain what they are, being the necessary outcome of the general constitution of the species and its relation to the permanent environment. But the more detailed and special rules are relative also to the successive states of society arising from its dynamical laws. They become more numerous with the progress of social development and the growing complexity of social life, and are modified in their substance by our increasing knowledge of sociological, and even cosmological, laws. Obvious examples are supplied by the cases of Slavery and Polygamy, and by the altered duties imposed on individuals by changes in the system of civil government or by the evolution and recognition of a Spiritual Power.

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2. For Positivists, rights" of individuals do not exist in the sphere of morals; with the disappearance of supernatural wills, from which alone they could originate, they lose their meaning. Apart from special prescriptions of human law, on which, no doubt, rights may be founded which in its sphere are valid, we recognise only duties, and this at once changes the spirit and tone in which questions of mutual obligation are approached. For stormy self-asserting controversy, peaceable impartial study is substituted. By a "duty" we understand a useful social function voluntarily discharged. When it is so regarded, all that is vague and mystical in the notion of a "right" is cleared

away; and the claim of Humanity on our service takes its place. The one right (if we will persist in using the word), which any member of society can demand at the hands of his fellows is that of being free to do his duty, and being, within reasonable limits, enabled and assisted to do it.

For the moral regeneration of society, which is the great aim on which Positivism seeks to concentrate human effort, the principal resource must lie in Education. And the Education of the future must be, principally and throughout, religious, not indeed in the old, but in the Positive sense. The modern intellect has revolted against this truth, when proclaimed especially by Catholicism, because it repudiated the ascendancy of the decadent faiths. But the Religion of Humanity re-asserts the claim, which lost its hold on progressive minds by being associated with retrograde beliefs. It will begin, in the domestic circle and under the guardianship of the mother, to train the heart of the child and discipline his habits, so as to prepare him for the future effective service of the true Great Being. The germs then deposited will be developed by the priesthood in the later systematic education of the youth, all knowledge, from the most elementary truths of science upward to its highest regions, being sanctified by this presiding destination. And these influences will be continued in the maturer life of the believer by the permanent consultative action of the Sacred Order, by the Social Sacra