n
thought, there the Republic is._'--Professor Clifford, _Nineteenth
Century_, October, 1877.

CHAPTER IV.

GOODNESS AS ITS OWN REWARD.

'_Who chooses me must give, and hazard all he hath._' Inscription on
the Leaden Casket. _Merchant of Venice._

What I have been urging in the last chapter is really nothing more than
the positivists admit themselves. It will be found, if we study their
utterances as a whole, that they by no means believe practically in
their own professions, or consider that the end of action can be either
defined and verified by sociology, or made attractive by sympathy. On
the contrary, they confess plainly how inadequate these are by
themselves, by continually supplementing them with additions from quite
another quarter. But their fault is that this confession is, apparently,
only half conscious with them; and they are for ever reproducing
arguments as sufficient which they have already in other moments
implicitly condemned as meaningless. My aim has been, therefore, to put
these arguments out of court altogether, and safely shut the doors on
them. Hitherto they have played just the part of an idle populace, often
turned out of doors, but as often breaking in again, and confusing with
their noisy cheers a judgment that has not yet been given. Let us have
done, then, with the conditions of happiness till we know what happiness
is. Let us have done with enthusiasm till we know if there is anything
to be enthusiastic about.

I have quoted George Eliot's cheers already, as expressing what this
enthusiasm is. I will now quote her again, as showing how fully she
recognises that its value depends upon its object, and that its only
possible object must be of a definite, and in the first place, of a
personal nature. In her novel of _Daniel Deronda_, the large part of the
interest hangs on which way the heroine's character will develop itself;
and this interest, in the opinion of the authoress, is of a very intense
kind. Why should it be? she asks explicitly. And she gives her answer in
the following very remarkable and very instructive passage:

'_Could there be a slenderer, more insignificant thread,_' she says,
'_in human history, than this consciousness of a girl, busy with her
small inferences of the way in which she could make her life pleasant?
in a time too, when ideas were with fresh vigour making armies of
themselves, and the universal kinship was declaring itself fiercely:
w