And there are philosophers who would persuade us that, unless we accept all the religious or theological doctrines which have appeared to them acceptable, we rob man of every incentive for being moral at all. If God is not going to repay him with interest for the pains which he gives himself, does he not play the part of a dupe in being good? We have seen that this was palpably the position of Paley. [Footnote: Chapter xxiv, Sec 96.] If God will not reconcile, ultimately, benevolence and self- interest, proclaimed Reid, man "is reduced to this miserable dilemma, whether it is best to be a fool or a knave." [Footnote: _Essays on the Active Powers of Man_, Essay III, Part III, chapter viii. It would be absurd to believe that either Paley or Reid lived down to the level of his doctrine. Both were very decent men, and capable of disinterestedness.] Some of the utterances of Kant and of Green seem to point in the same direction, but both have made it abundantly plain that they, personally, and whatever their intellectual perplexities, were moved by something much higher than egoism. [Footnote: See chapters xxiv, Sec 97; xxvi, 3; and xxix.] I mean to say very little about philosophy in this volume. I wish to keep to ethics, a science old enough and strong enough to stand upon its own feet. But it would be wrong not to underline one or two points in this connection, if only to obviate misunderstanding: (1) There is nothing wrong in a man's wishing to earn the heaven in which he believes. It is not wrong for him to wish to be happy on earth and in the body. But if the desire for his own happiness, either here or hereafter, is the _only_ motive that can move him, he is not a good man. Prudence may be a virtue, generally speaking; but it is no substitute for benevolence. The man who is _only_ prudent is no fit member of any society of rational beings anywhere. (2) Men are often better than their words would indicate. Paley talks as if he were a cad; Reid flounders; Kant, noble as are many of his utterances, sometimes gives forth an uncertain sound. Yet no one of these men was personally selfish. And yet all of these men assumed that morality is endangered unless there is a God to repay men for being good. Why did they insist so strenuously upon this, and incorporate it into their philosophy? We must, I think, go beneath the surface to find the real reason; and when we have discovered it, we cannot regard them in an unfavorable light. They felt, I believe, that good men _ought_ to be made happy; that this is rational, if anything is. So far, they are quite in accord with the doctrine of the Rational Social Will. And they saw no other way of guaranteeing a complete rationality than in holding to a theistic philosophy.