The first of these doctrines was set forth, a few years ago, in two eloquent and affecting papers, by Mr. Frederick Harrison, in the _Nineteenth Century_. How much sympathy I feel with a great deal which is said in these papers,[5] how sincerely I respect Mr. Harrison’s noble conception of the aim of life, even where I most completely misdoubt the validity of the method he proposes for attaining it, there is scarcely need to say. It is precisely because such Positivists as he and Mr. Morley and the late George Eliot, and such Agnostics as many I could name, assume such really high ground in their teaching, and appeal (though, as I think, in a fallacious way) to our very noblest sympathies and aspirations, that I feel urged to raise my feeble voice and call in question their guidance. There, in truth, stand, as they point to them, the snowy summits of purity and goodness. But by what path would they guide us to ascend them? Even if their own strong souls may climb those arid crags, can they be in any possible sense a better way than that by which millions of believers in God and immortality have gone up on high? Let us take Mr. Harrison’s doctrine of the “Posthumous Activities” of the soul, and endeavor to estimate how far it is calculated to act as an efficient motive of virtue on ordinarily constituted, well-intentioned men and women. We must bear in mind that it is formally proposed as a substitute for the old belief in the immortality of the individual,--that is (according to the Theist creed), in the immortality of the _virtue_ of the individual. While a Theist believes that, having lighted that sacred torch, he shall be permitted to bear it onward, burning more purely and brightly forever, the Comtist thinks he must lay down his at the side of his grave, though other men may ignite their own from it, and so carry on its light from age to age.