But if not, then I verily believe that the human race will go its own
evil way; and my only consolation lies in the reflection that, however
bad our posterity may become, so long as they hold by the plain rule of
not pretending to believe what they have no reason to believe, because
it may be to their advantage so to pretend, they will not have reached
the lowest depths of immorality._' I will content myself with these two
instances, but others of a similar kind might be multiplied
indefinitely.

Now by a simple substitution of terms, such language as this will reveal
at once one important fact to us. According to the avowed principles of
positive morality, morality has no other test but happiness. Immorality,
therefore, can have no conceivable meaning but unhappiness, or at least
the means to it, which in this case are hardly distinguishable from the
end; and thus, according to the above rigid reasoners, the human race
will not have reached the lowest depths of misery so long as it rejects
the one thing which _ex hypothesi_ might render it less miserable.
Either then all this talk about truth must really be so much irrelevant
nonsense, or else, if it be not nonsense, the test of conduct is
something distinct from happiness. The question before us is a plain
one, which may be answered in one of two ways, but which positivism
cannot possibly answer in both. Is truth to be sought only because it
conduces to happiness, or is happiness only to be sought for when it is
based on truth? In the latter case truth, not happiness, is the test of
conduct. Are our positive moralists prepared to admit this? If so, let
them explicitly and consistently say so. Let them keep this test and
reject the other, for the two cannot be fused together.

[Greek: oxos t' aleipha t' egcheas tautô kutei
dichostatount an ou philoin prosennepois.]