Life itself is the greatest of all goods, as it is the condition of all others, but life’s value fades if we are not loved. It is love, comradeship and the fellowship of kindred souls which give to the humblest life a significance and a feeling of value. This, Guyau points out with some tenderness, is the tragedy of suicides. These occurrences are a social no less than an individual tragedy. The tragic element lies in the fact that they were persons who were unable to give their devotion to some object, and the loss of personalities in this way is a real loss to society, but it is mainly society itself which is to blame for them. We need not fear, says Guyau, that such a gospel will promote unduly the operation of mere animality or instinctive action, for in the growth of the scientific spirit he sees the development of the great enemy of all instinct. It is the dissolving force _par excellence_, the revolutionary spirit which incessantly wages warfare within society against authority, and in the individual it operates through reason against the instinctive impulses. Every instinct tends to lapse in so far as it is reflected upon by consciousness. The old notion of duty or obligation must, in Guyau’s opinion, be abandoned. The sole commandment which a scientific and positive ethic, such as he endeavours to indicate, can recognise, is expressible only in the words, “Develop your life in all directions, be an individual as rich as possible in energy, intensive and extensive”—in other words, “Be the most social and sociable being you can.” It is this which replaces the “categorical imperative.” He aptly points out the failure of modern society to offer scope for devotion, which is really a superabundance of life, and its proneness to crush out opportunities which offer a challenge to the human spirit. There is a claim of life itself to adventure; there is a pleasure in risk and in conflict; and this pleasure in risk and adventure has been largely overlooked in its relation to the moral life. Such risk and adventure are not merely a pure negation of self or of personal life, but rather, he considers, that life raised to its highest power, reaching the sublime. By virtue of such devotion our lives are enriched. He draws a touching picture of the sacrifice upon which our modern social life and civilisation are based, and draws an analogy between the blood of dead horses used by the ploughman in fertilising his field, and the blood of the martyrs of humanity, _qui ont fécondé l’avenir_. Often they may have been mistaken; later generations may wonder if their cause was worth fighting for; yet, although nothing truly is sadder than to die in vain, that devotion was valuable in and for itself.