ocures for others" (ch. xv.)

[156] Taine's _Ancien Regime_, p. 287.

Surely it is a childish or pedantic misinterpretation to represent this
as egoism, whether armed or not with keen sight; and still worse to talk
of it as over-throwing the barriers that keep in the throng of selfish
appetites. "Every citizen should be made to feel that the section of
which he is a member is a Whole, that cannot subsist and be happy
without virtue; experience should teach him at every moment that the
wellbeing of the members can only result from that of the whole body"
(ch. xv.) To say of such a doctrine as this, that it is to invite every
individual to make himself happy after his own will and fashion, and to
pull down the barriers of the selfish appetites, is the very absurdity
of philosophic prejudice. It is for us to look at Holbach's ethical
doctrine in its widest practical application, and if we place ourselves
at a social point of view, we cannot but perceive that the principle
laid down in the words that we have just quoted, was the indispensable
weapon against the anti-social selfishness of the oppressive privileged
class. These words represent the ethical side of every popular and
democratic movement. You may class Holbach's morality as the morality of
self-interest, if you please; but its true base lay in social sympathy.
To proclaim happiness as the test of virtue was to develop the doctrine
of naturalism; for happiness is the outcome of a conformity to the
natural condition of things. On the other hand, to insist that virtue
lies in promoting the happiness of the body social as a whole, was to
preach the most sovereign of all truths, in a state of things where the
body social as a whole was kept distracted and miserable by the
selfishness of a scanty few of its members. The Church, nominally built
upon the morality of the Golden Rule, was perverted into being the great
organ of sinister self-interest. The Atheists, apparently formulating
the morality of the Epicureans, were in effect the teachers of public
spirit and beneficence. And, taught in such circumstances, public
spirit could only mean revolution. We may doubt whether Holbach had
thought out the very different questions that may be fused under the
easy phrase of a basis for morals. What are the sanctions of moral
precepts? Why ought each to seek the happiness of all? What is the mark
of the difference between right and wrong? What is the foundation of
Conscien