Huxley, Harriet Martineau, George Eliot, Leslie Stephen, Spencer, Bain, Clifford—have co-operated in removing ethics to an independent basis, and have eloquently promulgated the new motives of morality in their works. They are convinced that morality will only be purified and elevated when moral acts are no longer performed for the sake of supernatural rewards, or out of fear of torment, and that men will be the more easily induced to lead consistently moral lives when they are taught to regard the moral law, not as an alien precept imposed by a tantalizing Deity, and in utter antagonism to self-interest, but as a rational adjustment of their own interests, the higher with the lower, and the individual impulses with the social obligations. And, under the influence of those great writers, a large number of ethical fellowships have already appeared, sustaining a high moral standard among all sections of the community on purely humanitarian grounds. The work is rapidly increasing, and finds ready converts in all classes of society. It is an object-lesson in constructive Rationalism, a practical answer to the timid apprehensions of wavering Theists, an anticipation of the purely secularistic moral training of the years to come.
Owing to the marvellous literary activity of the present age, the results which have been attained in the various departments of Rationalism have been immediately communicated to almost every class in the community. The scepticism of a Bayle or a Hobbes could be confined within very narrow limits, and even the criticism of Hume or of Voltaire had a comparatively limited audience. The enormous quantity and the graduated character of modern literature have had the effect of diffusing a reasoned scepticism in social strata which had been hitherto impermeable. Religious controversy of a fundamental character rages in all but the very lowest social spheres. The working man, who has neither leisure nor faculty to enter the labyrinthic details of the struggle, is nevertheless able to appreciate its broad moral. The mere continuance of the struggle and its ever-increasing difficulty naturally enfeeble his trust in traditional doctrine. Secularist and Christian Evidence lecturers are ever assailing him with their conflicting statements. He is but too ready to listen to the politician or sociologist who would divert his attention
