and the moral imperative is reduced to an empty vaunt. For what can be
an emptier flourish than for one set of men, and these a confessed
minority, to proclaim imperious laws to others, which they can never get
the others to obey, and which are essentially meaningless to the only
people to whom they are not superfluous? Suppose that, on positive
grounds, I find pleasure in humility, and my friend finds pleasure in
pride, and so far as we can form a judgment the happiness of us both is
equal; what possible grounds can I have for calling my state better than
his? Were I a theist, I should have the best of grounds, for I should
believe that hereafter my friend's present contentment would be
dissipated, and would give place to despair. But as a positivist, if his
contentment do but last his lifetime, what can I say except this, that
he has chosen what, for him, was his better part for ever, and no God or
man will ever take it away from him? To say then that his immoral state
was worse than my moral state would be a phrase incapable of any
practical meaning. It might mean that, could my friend be made to think
as I do, he would be happier than he is at present; but we have here an
impossible hypothesis, and an unverifiable conclusion. It is true enough
that I might present to my friend some image of my own inward state, and
of all the happiness it gave me; but if, having compared his happiness
and mine as well as he could, he still liked his own best, exhortation
would have no power, and reproach no meaning.

Here, then, are three results--simple, immediate, and necessary--of
positivism, on the moral end. Of the three characteristics at present
supposed essential to it, positivism eliminates two and materially
modifies the third.

In the first place, the importance of the moral end is altogether
changed in character. It has nothing in it whatever of the infinite, and