that would have the strongest case; for the pleasures of indulgence are admitted by both sides, while the merits of abstention are admitted by only one. Let us go back, for instance, in connection with this matter, to what Professor Huxley has told us is the grand result of education. It leads us away, he says, from '_the rank and steaming valleys of sense_,' up to the '_highest good_,' which is '_discerned by reason_,' '_resting in eternal calm_.' And let us ask him again, what, as uttered by a positivist, these words can by any possibility mean. '_The rank and steaming valleys of sense_'! Why are they rank and steaming? Or, if they are, why is that any condemnation of them? Or, if we do condemn them, what else are we to praise? The entire raw material, not of our pleasures only, but of our knowledge also, is given us, say the positive school, by the senses. Surely then to condemn the senses must be to condemn life. Let us imagine Professor Huxley talking in this way to Theophile Gautier. Let us imagine him frowning grimly at the licentious Frenchman, and urging him with all vehemence to turn to the _highest good_. The answer will at once be, '_That is exactly, my dear Professor, what I do turn to. And, listen_,' he might say--the following is again a passage from his own writings--'_to the way in which I figure the highest good to myself. It is a huge building, with its outer walls all blind and windowless; a huge court within, surrounded by a colonnade of white marble; in the midst a musical fountain with a jet of quick-silver in the Arabian fashion; leaves of orange-trees and pomegranates placed alternately; overhead the bluest of skies and the mellowest of suns; great long-nosed greyhounds should be sleeping here and there; from time to time barefoot negresses with golden ankle-rings, fair women servants white and slender, and clad in rich strange garments, should pass between the hollow arches, basket on arm, or urn poised on head._[19] _Three things give me pleasure, gold, marble, and purple--brilliance, mass, and colour. These are the stuffs out of which my dreams are made; and all my ideal palaces are constructed of these materials._'[20] What answer could Professor Huxley make to this that would not seem to the other at once barbarous and nonsensical? The best answer he could make would be simply, '_I do not agree with you_.' And to this again the answer would at once be, '_That is because you are still hampered by prejudices, whose only possible foundations we have both removed; and because I am a man of culture, and you are not._'