rality. The one is an
attempt, in his opinion always unsuccessful, to lift the veil from the
unseen, to know the unknowable; the other is simply the code that
social man, through the ages, has elaborated for his own guidance, and
proved by his own experience. So far as the conduct of life goes, the
morality of one who accepts the agnostic position with regard to
revelation and the unseen universe differs in no respect from the code
taken under the protection of the modern forms of religion. As John
Morley, in his _Essay on Voltaire_ wrote of such a person:

"There are new solutions for him, if the old have fallen dumb. If
he no longer believe death to be a stroke from the sword of God's
justice, but the leaden footfall of an inflexible law of matter,
the humility of his awe is deepened, and the tenderness of his
pity made holier, that creatures who can love so much should have
their days so shut round with a wall of darkness. The purifying
anguish of remorse will be stronger, not weaker, when he has
trained himself to look upon every wrong in thought, every duty
omitted from act, each infringement of the inner spiritual law
which humanity is constantly perfecting for its own guidance and
advantage, less as a breach of the decrees of an unseen tribunal
than as an ungrateful infection weakening and corrupting the
future of his brothers."

But there are wider questions than the immediate problems of conduct. A
certain type of mind finds it almost impossible not to attempt ethical
judgments on the whole universe, not to speculate whether the Cosmos, as
we can imagine it from the part of it within the cognisance of man,
offers a spectacle of moral or immoral or of non-moral significance. In
the old times of Greece and in the modern world many have been devoid of
the taste for argument on such subjects. Those who are uninterested in
these abstract discussions are rarely in opposition to the mode of faith
surrounding them, as to reject the doctrines held by the majority of
one's friends and associates implies either a disagreeable disposition
or an unusual interest in ultimate problems; they are usually orthodox
according to their environment--Stoics, Epicureans, Jews, Episcopalians,
Catholics, Quakers, Methodists, Mormons, Mohammedans, Buddhists, or
whatever may be the prevailing dogma around them. The attitude of
indifference to moral philosophy has practicall