As for the point of disinterestedness, the history of Freethought in general, and the life of Bradlaugh in particular, will serve to show whether or not the recognition of utility as the final test of the right or wrong of actions has led men to put the low utility above the high, the near above the far. To do the former would be to abandon the very avowal of the principle, since it always brings odium and injury on the avowers. The very persistence of an unpopular movement is the decisive proof that its promoters have sought higher ends than money gain. What the utilitarian principle has done for Bradlaugh and those like-minded is not to give them the primary impulse to fight for truth and right as they see them, but to give them an enduring support in the battle. The first impulse springs from veracity of character _plus_ knowledge; but it is sure to be opposed by bitter criticism, imputing to the straightforward course all manner of evil results. When the reformer is convinced that not only truth and justice but the highest utility itself is on his side, he is thrice armed. And if with some unbelievers the rejection of transcendental moral principles has meant the return to a timid or a base conformity, they are at least no worse guided than before, and the blame of their dissimulation must lie with the religious system which not only counsels but enforces it, not with the doctrine which classes social dissimulation as a vice. Certain it is that under the auspices of the Christian creed England has lived mainly for low and narrow utilities, and not for the high and broad; the transcendental creed availing only to worsen matters by adding to the forces of evil the element of persecuting bigotry. Rationalism once for all excludes the last factor; and if it ever lends itself to a popular disregard of the great utilities and a pursuit of the small, which are the undoing of the great, it will assuredly not be in virtue of following such a lead as Bradlaugh's. Of his influence on his followers those can best speak who have mixed with them. Personal and magnetic as it was, it depended for its continuance on the unvarying nobility of his appeal to the best instincts--to courage, honour, justice, and the love of truth. Hundreds of men--men to whom the generality of pulpit sermons are either inane commonplaces or maudlin nonsense--can testify to the fashion in which he stirred them to high sympathies and generous determinations, making life for all of them, however narrow their sphere, a vista of worthy activities and abiding consolations.