Page:Eminent English liberals in and out of Parliament.djvu/189

 But, granted that a man's religion has little or no influence over his moral conduct, what then? Man will ponder the strange problem of his destiny; and those who believe that religion is a mere mental infirmity must be prepared boldly to sum it up in the terrible words of Richter: "Of the world will become a world-machine, of God a force, and of the second world a coffin." Such teaching, it can hardly be doubted, would profoundly alter the hopes, if not the moralities, of the more energetic portion of the human family. Burns, in his most despairing poem, sang—

No comfort, alas! no recompense. In such sore plight humanity, I fear, would be disposed to say with Marcus Antoninus, "It were well to die if there be gods, and sad to live if there be none."

With respect to the question of a republic, Mr. Morley's attitude, as might be expected in so courageous a political thinker, is clearly defined. He recognizes that, until the republican banner is boldly unfurled, we who are Radicals are condemned to strike at phantoms. He is, of course, at the same time, no partisan of any revolution other than a revolution of public opinion. In his powerful treatise on "Compromise," he says, "Our conviction is not, on the present hypothesis, that monarchy ought to be swept away in England, but that monarchy produces certain mischievous consequences to the public spirit of the communit3^ And so what we are bound to do is to take care not to conceal this