ortant that we should clearly understand the meanings of the
terms we employ. Now I deny that any difference subsists between
religion and morality. That any such distinction should exist in men's
minds is due to the fact that dogma is inseparably connected with
religion. If you eliminate dogma, what does religion consist of but
morality? Substitute the love of Humanity for the love of the
Unknowable--which is the subject of worship of Mr Germsell; or of the
Deity, who is the object of worship of the majority of mankind--and you
obtain a stimulus to morality which will suffice for all human need. It
is in this great emotion, as it seems to me, that you will find at once
the religion and the morality of the future.

_Germsell_. From what source do you get the force which enables you to
love humanity with a devotion so intense that it shall elevate your
present moral standard?

_Coldwaite_. From humanity itself. I am not going to be entrapped into
getting it from any unknowable source; the love of humanity, whether it
be humanity as existing, or when absorbed by death into the general mass,
is perpetually generating itself.

_Mrs Allmash_. Then it must produce itself from what was there before;
therefore it must be the same love, which keeps on going round and round.

_Lord Fondleton_. A sort of circular love, in fact. I've often felt it:
but I didn't think it right to encourage it.

_Lady Fritterly_. Lord Fondleton, how can you be so silly? Don't pay
attention to him, Mr Coldwaite. I confess I still don't see how you can
get a higher love out of humanity than humanity has already got in it,
unless you are to look to some other source for it.

_Coldwaite_. Why, mayn't it evolve from itself?

_Germsell_. How can it evolve without a propulsive force behind it? The
thing is too palpable an absurdity to need argument. You can no more fix
limits to the origin of force than you can destroy its persistency.

_Lord Fondleton_ [_aside_]. That seems to me one of those sort of things
no fellow can understand.

_Germsell_. All you can say of it is that it is a conditioned effect of
an unconditioned cause. That no idea or feeling arises, save as a result
of some physical force expended in producing it, is fast becoming a
commonplace of science; and whoever duly weighs the evidence will see
that nothing but an overwhelming bias in favour of a preconceived theory
can explain its non-acceptance. I think my