What is left, when religion is gone, to give to the personal virtues of purity (of _thought_ as well as of act), of truth, temperance, and contentment, the high status they ought to hold? These virtues, in the history of the moral development of mankind, are always the last to be recognized. In the earlier ages of morality, nobody asks for more than negative merits,--_not_ to murder or rob or deal treacherously. Then comes the great step, when the rabbinical precept, “Thou shalt _not_ do to another what thou wouldest not he should do to thee,” is exchanged for the positive Christian law, _Do_ to another what thou wouldest he should do to thee. But only very slowly, above and beyond all social duties, the principle, “Be perfect, as thy Father in heaven is perfect,” has dawned on mankind as the aim of life; and how little it is yet the practical rule of conduct there is no need to tell. Let us but let slip our faith in the perfect Father in heaven, and will it not sink again by degrees into oblivion? We shall hear a great deal, doubtless (for a time, at all events), of the duty of “laboring for the cause of humanity,” and be encouraged by promises of “posthumous activity.” But where are the motives for personal and secret virtue to come from,--that inward virtue without which even warm social benevolence soon becomes tainted? It _must_, it would seem, fall more and more into the background. There is, theoretically, no more reason for placing it forward: there is no more any “end of creation” in contemplation, to which the virtue of each soul, to be wrought out by its own struggles, must contribute its quotum. _The intrinsic moral character of each soul_ will no longer be deemed the concern of any being except the man himself, but only what _each is able to achieve in the way of contributing to the welfare of other people_. While the lesson of the higher ethics has been, “It is more important to _be_ good than to _do_ good,” that of the new ethics must inevitably be, “It is very important what you _do_: it is of the smallest possible consequence what you _are_ except in so far as your neighbors may know it and be affected thereby.”