ld be to sin against the very principle of
utility. For the rest, the rationalist has his moral bias like another;
and in virtue of it, as animating rationalisers of various developments,
has been wrought the main part of the modern purification of working
morality, though the moral instinct in religious men has responded, and
has at times initiated reformation. It is left to the religionist to
argue that a bias which has wrought for truth, justice, and mercy will
somehow fail to preserve other virtues. No reminiscence of the sexual
history of Christian societies can restrain Christian advocates from
imputing to the spirit of reason a tendency to promote promiscuity in
the sex relation and thus to overthrow 'the family.' Holding as they do
that the family is the keystone of society and civilisation, they in
effect argue that the practice of rational calculation of means and ends
will destroy both. Pessimism could no further go; and if this be not the
height of pessimism it is a stress of false-witness which puts the
accuser outside the pale of controversy. As an imputation upon known
rationalists in general the theorem is simply false. The systematic
revival of Aryan polygamy has been a religious process; and the freest
practitioners of sexual choice among reasoning unbelievers, the Russian
Nihilists, have been notoriously monogynous.

It may be hoped that we shall in future hear less and less in these
matters of the extremities of orthodox malice or misgiving, as we hear
less and less of the old plea that whereas a bad believer may be held
in moral check by his religious fears, a bad unbeliever will fear only
the police. The statistics of the jails do not encourage that line of
apologetics; and the records of the Society for the Prevention of
Cruelty to Children do not go to show either that rationalism makes
parents cruel or that religion keeps them kind. The plain truth is that
upon bad bias law is the main check; and that the most vaunted religious
methods of developing the good bias of the weak have latterly been
systematically supplemented, in the organisation, for instance, of the
Salvation Army so called, by secular methods which are the avowal of the
final and general futility of the others.

In no other direction are the moral ideals of rationalism less fully
vindicated by the movement of civilisation. The humane and scientific
treatment of criminals has actually been antagonised, in the name of the
Christian