But according to the positivist theory, this hypothesis is in most cases an impossibility.

The moral end, as we have seen, is an inward state of the heart; and the heart, on the showing of the positivists, is for each man an absolute solitude.

No one can gain admission to it but by his assistance; and to the larger part no one can ever gain admission at all.
_Thus in the seas of life enisled, With echoing straits between us thrown, Dotting the shoreless watery wild, We mortal myriads live alone._ So says Mr.Matthew Arnold; and the gentle Keble utters the same sentiment, remarking, with a delicate pathos, how seldom those even who have known us best and longest _Know half the reason why we smile or sigh._ Thus in the recesses of his own soul each man is, for the positivist, as much alone as if he were the only conscious thing in the universe; and his whole inner life, when he dies, will, to use some words of George Eliot's that I have already quoted, _Be gathered like a scroll within the tomb, Unread for ever._ No one shall enquire into his inward thoughts, much less shall anyone judge him for them.

To no one except himself can he in any way have to answer for them.
Such is the condition of the individual according to the positivist theory.

It is evident, therefore, that one of the first results of positivism is to destroy even the rudiments of any machinery by which one man could govern, with authority, the inward kingdom of another; and the moral imperative is reduced to an empty vaunt.