ll be distinctly less
intense. It will, as we have seen already, be but a vapid consummation
at its best; and the more vividly it is brought before us in
imagination, the less likely shall we be to '_struggle, groan, and
agonize_,' for the sake of hastening it in reality. It will do nothing,
at any rate, to increase the tendency to self-sacrifice that is now at
work in the world; and this, though startling us now and then by some
spasmodic manifestation, is not strong enough to have much general
effect on the present; still less will it have more effect on the
future. Vicarious happiness as a rule is only possible when the object
gained for another is enormously greater than the object lost by self;
and it is not always possible even then: whilst when the gains on either
side are nearly equal, it ceases altogether. And necessarily so. If it
did not, everything would be at a dead-lock. Life would be a perpetual
holding back, instead of a pushing forward. Everyone would be waiting at
the door, and saying to everyone else, '_After you_.' But all these
practical considerations are entirely forgotten by the positivists. They
live in a world of their own imagining, in which all the rules of this
world are turned upside down. There, the defeated candidate in an
election would be radiant at his rival's victory. When a will was read,
the anxiety of each relative would be that he or she should be excluded
in favour of the others; or more probably still that they should be all
excluded in favour of a hospital. Two rivals, in love with the same
woman, would be each anxious that his own suit might be thwarted. And a
man would gladly involve himself in any ludicrous misfortune, because he
knew that the sight of his catastrophe would rejoice his whole circle of
friends. The course of human progress, in fact, would be one gigantic
donkey-race, in which those were the winners who were farthest off from
the prize.

We have but to state the matter in terms of common life, to see how
impossible is the only condition of things that would make the positive
system practicable. The first wonder that suggests itself, is how so
grotesque a conception could ever have originated. But its genesis is
not far to seek. The positivists do not postulate any new elements in
human nature, but the reduction of some, elimination of others, and the
magnifying of others. And they actually find cases where this process
has been effected. But they quite forget