exceptional character; there is no known means by which it can be made
more common; and with the moral miser the case will be just the same.
Lastly, if such a character be barely producible even in the present
state of the world, much less will it be producible when human
capacities shall have been curtailed by positivism, when the pleasures
that the gold of virtue represents are less intense than at present, and
the value of the coveted coin is indefinitely depreciated.

Much more might be added to the same purpose, but enough has been said
already to make these two points clear:--firstly, that the positive
system, if it is to do any practical work in the world, requires that
the whole human character shall be profoundly altered; and secondly,
that the required alteration is one that may indeed be dreamt about, but
which can never possibly be made. Even were it made, the results would
not be splendid; but no matter how splendid they might be, this is of no
possible moment to us. There are few things on which it is idler to
speculate than the issues of impossible contingencies. And the
positivists would be talking just as much to the purpose as they do now,
were they to tell us how fast we should travel supposing we had wings,
or what deep water we could wade through if we were twenty-four feet
high. These last, indeed, are just the suppositions that they do make.
Between our human nature and the nature they desiderate there is a deep
and fordless river, over which they can throw no bridge, and all their
talk supposes that we shall be able to fly or wade across it, or else
that it will dry up of itself.

_Rusticus expectat dum defluat amnis, at ille
Labitur et labetur, in omne volubilis ævum._

So utterly grotesque and chimerical is this whole positive theory of