CHAPTER V.

LOVE AS A TEST OF GOODNESS.

[Greek: Erôta de, ton tyrannon andrôn,
Ton tas Aphroditas
Philtatôn thalamôn
Klêdouchon, ou sebizomen,
Perthonta.]--_Euripides._


I will again re-state, in other words than my own, the theory we are now
going to test by the actual facts of life. '_The assertion_,' says
Professor Huxley, '_that morality is in any way dependent on certain
philosophical problems, produces the same effect on my mind as if one
should say that a man's vision depends on his theory of sight, or that
he has no business to be sure that ginger is hot in his mouth, unless he
has formed definite views as to the nature of ginger_.' Or, to put the
matter in slightly different language, the sorts of happiness, we are
told, that are secured to us by moral conduct are facts, so far as
regards our own consciousness of them, as simple, as constant and as
universal, as is the perception of the outer world secured to us by our
eyesight, or as the sensation formed on the palate by the application of
ginger to it.

Love, for instance, according to this view, is as simple a delight for
men in its highest forms as it is for animals in its lowest. What George