The fact that a great many scientists, including Nordau, do not live as if they were perfectly convinced of the non-existence of personal responsibility beyond the grave, requires quite a different kind of explanation than that generally afforded, before we abandon the belief that they are self-deceivers. The moral scientists themselves have found the necessity of some explanation, and this is what they say, though perhaps in other words: “We do not believe in any responsibility beyond the grave, but we do what we think our duty to humanity. We should be sorry and ashamed to be actuated by a fear of punishment or the desire for reward, and not to do what is right and good for the sake of the right and the good.” This sounds very beautiful, but too boastful almost to be accepted as the bare truth. Some of them who are aware of this, or who are genuinely too modest to thus stand forward as demi-gods, add: “In living and acting as we do, and wanting others to live and to act in the same way, we are not more unselfish, nor morally better, than others. We are only wiser; in fact, more intellectually selfish. And all we desire of other people is that they should be intellectually selfish. In exercising self-control and devotion to others, we do not deprive ourselves of pleasures and enjoyments, because most of these come to us from our surroundings and from society at large. For what we do for our wives and families, we get love in return; for what we do for society and the race, we get two rewards: firstly, esteem and reputation, perhaps money; and, secondly, all the social advantages which are valuable to us in the same proportion as society is in a healthy state.”