h of it--until what we may
call 'this present time,' in which it is gravely asked whether Religion
has any effect on morals, by persons who have essentially no idea
whatever of the meaning of either Religion or Morality.

Concerning which dispute, this much perhaps you may have the patience
finally to read, as the Fleche of Amiens fades in the distance, and
your carriage rushes towards the Isle of France, which now exhibits
the most admired patterns of European Art, intelligence, and
behaviour.

59. All human creatures, in all ages and places of the world, who have
had warm affections, common sense, and self-command, have been, and
are, Naturally Moral. Human nature in its fulness is necessarily
Moral,--without Love, it is inhuman, without sense,[70]
inhuman,--without discipline, inhuman.

[Footnote 70: I don't mean aesthesis,--but [Greek: nous], if you _must_
talk in Greek slang.]

In the exact proportion in which men are bred capable of these things,
and are educated to love, to think, and to endure, they become
noble,--live happily--die calmly: are remembered with perpetual honour
by their race, and for the perpetual good of it. All wise men know and
have known these things, since the form of man was separated from the
dust. The knowledge and enforcement of them have nothing to do with
religion: a good and wise man differs from a bad and idiotic one,
simply as a good dog from a cur, and as any manner of dog from a wolf
or a weasel. And if you are to believe in, or preach without half
believing in, a spiritual world or law--only in the hope that whatever
you do, or anybody else does, that is foolish or beastly, may be in
them and by them mended and patched and pardoned and worked up again
as good as new--the less you believe in--and most solemnly, the less
you talk about--a spiritual world, the better.

60. But if, loving well the creatures that are like yourself, you feel
that you would love still more dearly, creatures better than
yourself--were they revealed to you;--if striving with all your might
to mend what is evil, near you and around, you would fain look for a day
when some Judge of all the Earth shall wholly do right, and the little
hills rejoice on every side; if, parting with the companions that have
given you all the best joy you had on Earth, you desire ever to meet
their eyes again and clasp their hands,--where eyes shall no more be
dim, nor hands fail;--if, preparing yourselves to lie down beneat