The modern Utilitarians, though the range of their vision is so narrow,
have sterner logic in their teachings. That which tends to a man's
happiness is good, and must be followed, and the contrary shunned as
evil. So far so good. But the practical application of the doctrine is
fraught with mischief. Cribbed, cabined, and confined, by rank
Materialism, within the short space between birth and death, the
Utilitarians' scheme of happiness is merely a deformed torso, which
cannot certainly be considered as the fair goddess of our devotion.
The only scientific basis of morality is to be sought for in the
soul-consoling doctrines of Lord Buddha or Sri Sankaracharya. The
starting-point of the "pantheistic" (we use the word for want of a better
one) system of morality is a clear perception of the unity of the one
energy operating in the manifested Cosmos, the grand result which it is
incessantly striving to produce, and the affinity of the immortal human
spirit and its latent powers with that energy, and its capacity to
cooperate with the one life in achieving its mighty object.
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