And not this only: not only must the end in question be thus
presentable, but when presented it must be able to stand the inveterate
criticism of those who fear being allured by it, who are content as they
are, and have no wish to be made discontented. These men will submit it
to every test by which they may hope to prove that its attractions are
delusive. They will test it with reason, as we test a metal by an acid.
They will ask what it is based upon, and of what it is compounded. They
will submit it to an analysis as merciless as that by which their
advisers have dissolved theism.

Here then is a fact that all positive morality presupposes. It
presupposes that life by its very nature contains the possibility in it
of some one kind of happiness, which is open to all men, and which is
better than all others. It is sufficiently presentable even to those who
have not experienced it; and its excellence is not vaguely apparent
only, but can be exactly proved from obvious and acknowledged facts.
Further, this happiness must be removed from its alternatives by some
very great interval. The proudest, the serenest, the most successful
life of vice, must be miserable when compared with the most painful life
of virtue, and miserable in a very high degree; for morality is
momentous exactly in proportion to the interval between the things to be
gained and escaped by it. And unless this interval be a very profound
one, the language at present current as to the importance of virtue, the
dignity of life, and the earnestness of the moral struggle, will be
altogether overstrained and ludicrous.

Now is such a happiness a reality or is it a myth? That is the great
question. Can human life, cut off utterly from every hope beyond
itself--can human life supply it? If it cannot, then evidently there
can be no morality without religion. But perhaps it can. Perhaps life