Page:Anthony John (IA anthonyjohn00jero).pdf/215

 Landripp belonged to the new school of materialists. His religion was the happiness of humanity. Man to him was a mere chance product of the earth's crust, evolved in common with all other living things by chemical process. With the cooling of the earth—or may be its over-heating, it really did not matter which—the race would disappear—be buried, together with the history of its transient passing, beneath the eternal silences. Its grave might still roll on—to shape itself anew, to form out of its changed gases another race that in some future æon might be interested in examining the excavated evidences of a former zoological period.

Meanwhile the thing to do was to make man as happy as possible for so long as he lasted. This could best be accomplished by developing his sense of brotherhood out of which would be born justice and good will. Man was a gregarious animal. For his happiness he depended as much upon his fellows as upon his own exertions. The misery and suffering of any always, sooner or later, resulted in evil to the whole body. In society, as it had come to be constituted, the happiness of all was as much a practical necessity as was the health of all. For its own sake, a civilized community could no more disregard equity than it dare tolerate an