§ 1. A Summary § 2. Why Lead a Moral Life? Preliminary Remarks The Necessity for Morality Uselessness of Vague Threats The Need for an Early Education in Ethical Principles The Object-Lesson Furnished by the Japanese Criminality Our Aids The Importance of a Knowledge of the Origin of Morality Opinions of Ethicists Note on Systematic Moral Instruction § 3. Should the Truth be Told? (a) "Magna est veritas et prævalebit" (b) Obscurantism has had its Day (c) The Effect on Morality (d) The Real Danger (e) The Consolations of Belief, and the Distress we may Cause by our Candour (f) Can we Alter People's Beliefs? (g) Can Beliefs be Useful though False? (h) Is a New Religion Required? (i) Why be so Impatient of Error? § 4. The Outlook § 5. Concluding Remarks Appendix Index An edition of this book is issued in cloth at 1s. 6d. net, and another on superior paper, gilt lettered, at 3s. 6d. net. PREFACE TO FIRST EDITION What does a man seek when he examines his religious creed? To this question Canon Liddon replies as follows:--"He seeks intellectual satisfaction and moral support. His intellect asks for reliable information upon certain subjects of the most momentous importance. How does he come here? Whither is he going? What is the purpose and drift of the various forms of existence around him? Above all, what is the nature, what are the attributes and dispositions, of that Being to whom the highest yearnings of his inmost self constantly point as the true object of his existence? In asking that the answers to these questions shall be definite, that what is certain shall be affirmed as certain, what is doubtful as doubtful, what is false as false, he is only asking that his religious information shall be presented in as clear and practical a shape as his information on other subjects. In no department of human knowledge is haziness deemed a merit; by nothing is an educated mind more distinguished than by a resolute effort to mark the exact frontiers of its knowledge and its ignorance; to hesitate only when hesitation is necessary; to despair of knowledge only when knowledge is ascertainably out of reach. Surely on the highest and most momentous of all subjects this same precision may be asked for with reverence and in reason; surely the human mind is not bound to forget its noblest instincts when it approaches the throne and presence of its Maker?" (Some Elements of Religion, p. 24). Again, in his New Year's message for 1905, the Archbishop of Canterbury condemns indifference to truth as a vice, and "drifting along the current of popular opinion" as a sin. He invites and persuades us to use "the sadly-neglected powers and privileges of rational thought and common sense."