Let us turn now to positivism, and consider what is its position.

The positivist, we must remember, conceives of the moral end in the same way, and sets upon it the same value.

Let us see how far his own premisses will give him any support in this.

These premisses, so far as they differ from those of theism, consist of two great denials: there is no personal God, and there is no personal immortality.

We will glance rapidly at the direct results of these.
In the first place, they confine all the life with which we can have the least moral connection to the surface of this earth, and to the limited time for which life and consciousness can exist upon it.