ad
of common springs; but, for our own part, we think there cannot be too
great security against a lack of fresh water or of pure morality. To us
it is a matter of unmixed rejoicing that this latter necessary of
healthful life is independent of theological ink, and that its
evolution is insured in the interaction of human souls as certainly as
the evolution of science or art, with which, indeed, it is but a twin
ray, melting into them with undefinable limits.

The considerations here presented are very effective ones, and quite as
truthful as effective. There are human supports for morality of the most
important and far-reaching character, and such as are outside of any
theological considerations. We ought, as George Eliot so well says, to
rejoice that the reasons for being moral are manifold, that sympathy with
others, as well as the central fires of personality, or the craving to be
in harmony with the Eternal, is able to conduce to a righteous conduct. Her
objections to Young's narrow and selfish defence of immortality are well
presented and powerful, but they do not touch such high considerations as
those offered by Kant. The craving for personal freedom and perfection is
as strong and as helpful to the race as sympathy for others and yearning to
lift up the weak and fallen. When the sense of personality is gone, man
loses much of his character; and personality rests on a deep spiritual
foundation which does not mean egotism merely, but which does mean for the
majority a conviction of a continued existence. The tendency of the present
time is to dwell less upon the theological and more upon the human motives
to conduct; but it is to be doubted if the highest phases of morality can
be retained without belief in God and a future life. The common virtues,
the sympathetic motives to conduct, the spirit of helpfulness, may be
retained intact, and even increased in power and efficiency, by those
motives George Eliot presents; but the loftier virtues of personal heroism
and devotion to truth in the face of martyrdom of one form or another, the
saintly craving for purity and holiness, and the sturdy spirit of liberty
which will suffer no bonds to exist, can be had in their full development
only with belief that God calls us to seek for perfect harmony with
himself. Kant's view that a divine law within, the living word of God,
calls ever to us as personal beings to attain the perfection of our natur