ples
which they contain? This has sometimes been done, and we have seen
people declare that as they no longer believed in the various religions
so they despised morality and boldly proclaimed the maxim of bourgeois
selfishness, "Everyone for himself." But a Society, human or animal,
cannot exist without certain rules and moral habits springing up within
it; religion may go, morality remains. If we were to come to consider
that a man did well in lying, deceiving his neighbours, or plundering
them when possible (this is the middle-class business morality), we
should come to such a pass that we could no longer live together. You
might assure me of your friendship, but perhaps you might only do so in
order to rob me more easily; you might promise to do a certain thing for
me, only to deceive me; you might promise to forward a letter for me,
and you might steal it just like an ordinary governor of a jail. Under
such conditions society would become impossible, and this is so
generally understood that the repudiation of religions in no way
prevents public morality from being maintained, developed, and raised to
a higher and ever higher standard. This fact is so striking that
philosophers seek to explain it by the principles of utilitarianism, and
recently Spencer sought to base the morality which exists among us upon
physiological causes and the needs connected with the preservation of
the race.

Let me give you an example in order to explain to you what _we_ think on
the matter.

A child is drowning, and four men who stand upon the bank see it
struggling in the water. One of them does not stir, he is a partisan of
"Each one for himself," the maxim of the commercial middle-class; this
one is a brute and we need not speak of him further. The next one
reasons thus: "If I save the child, a good report of my action will be
made to the ruler of heaven, and the Creator will reward me by
increasing my flocks and my serfs," and thereupon he plunges into the
water. Is he therefore a moral man? Clearly not! He is a shrewd
calculator, that is all. The third, who is an utilitarian, reflects thus
(or at least utilitarian philosophers represent him as so reasoning):
"Pleasures can be classed in two categories, inferior pleasures and
higher ones. To save the life of anyone is a superior pleasure
infinitely more intense and more durable than others; therefore I will
save the child." Admitting that any man ever reasoned thus, would he not
b