ld all walk would be no greater
than the distance they could each walk. In the same way the value of
human life, as a whole, depends on the capacities of the individual
human being, as an enjoying animal. If these capacities be great, we
shall be eager in our desire to gratify them--certainly for ourselves,
and perhaps also for others; and this second desire may perhaps be great
enough to modify and to guide the first. But unless these capacities
_be_ great, and the means of gratifying them definite, our impulses on
our own behalf will become weak and sluggish, whilst those on behalf of
others will become less able to control them.

It will be apparent farther from this, that just as happiness, unless
some distinct positive quality, gains nothing as an end of action,
either in value or distinctness, by a mere diffusion in the present--by
an extension, as it were, laterally--so will it gain nothing further by
giving it another dimension, and by prospectively increasing it in the
future. We must know what it is first, before we know whether it is
capable of increase. Apart from this knowledge, the conception of
progress and the hope of some brighter destiny can add nothing to that
required _something_, which, so far as sociology can define it for us,
we have seen to be so utterly inadequate. Social conditions, it is true,
we may expect will go on improving; we may hope that the social
machinery will come gradually to run more smoothly. But unless we know
something positive to the contrary, the outcome of all this progress may
be nothing but a more undisturbed ennui or a more soulless sensuality.
The rose-leaves may be laid more smoothly, and yet the man that lies on
them may be wearier or more degraded.

_To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death._

This, for all that sociology can inform us to the contrary, may be the
lesson really taught us by the positive philosophy of progress.

But what the positivists themselves learn from it, is something very
different. The following verses are George Eliot's:

_Oh may I join the choir invisible
Of those immortal dead who live again
In lives made better by their presence. So
To live is heaven....
To make undying music in the world,
Breathing us beauteous order that controls
With growing sway the growing life of man.
So w