of worship of the majority of mankind—and you obtain a stimulus to morality which will suffice for all human need. It is in this great emotion, as it seems to me, that you will find at once the religion and the morality of the future.
Germsell. From what source do you get the force which enables you to love humanity with a devotion so intense that it shall elevate your present moral standard?
Coldwaite. From humanity itself. I am not going to be entrapped into getting it from any unknowable source; the love of humanity, whether it be humanity as existing, or when absorbed by death into the general mass, is perpetually generating itself.
Mrs Allmash. Then it must produce itself from what was there before; therefore it must be the same love, which keeps on going round and round.
Lord Fondleton. A sort of circular love, in fact. I’ve often felt it: but I didn’t think it right to encourage it.
Lady Fritterly. Lord Fondleton, how can you be so silly? Don’t pay attention to him, Mr Coldwaite. I confess I still don’t see how you can get a higher love out of humanity
than humanity has already got in it, unless you are to look to some other source for it.
Coldwaite. Why, mayn’t it evolve from itself?
Germsell. How can it evolve without a propulsive force behind it? The thing is too palpable an absurdity to need argument. You can no more fix limits to the origin of force than you can destroy its persistency.
Lord Fondleton [aside]. That seems to me one of those sort of things no fellow can understand.