That which mankind admires  in a truly moral man

is his energy, the exuberance of life  which urges him to

give his  intelligence, his feeling, his action, asking nothing

in return.

	 The strong  thinker, the man overflowing with

intellectual  life, naturally seeks to diffuse his ideas. There

is no pleasure in thinking unless the thought is

communicated to others. It is only the mentally poverty-

stricken man, who after he  has painfully hunted up some

idea, carefully hides it that later on he may label it with his

own name. The man of powerful intellect runs over with

ideas; he scatters them by  the handful. He is wretched if

he cannot share them with  others, cannot scatter them to

the four winds, for in this is  his life.

	 The same with regard to feeling. "We are not

enough for  ourselves: we have more tears than our own

sufferings claim,  more capacity for joy than our own

existence can justify,"  says Guyau, thus summing up the

whole question of morality in a few admirable lines,

caught from nature. The solitary  being is wretched,

restless, because he cannot share his  thoughts and feelings

with others. When we feel some great pleasure, we wish to

let others know that we exist, we feel, we love, we live, we

struggle, we fight.

	 At the same time, we feel the need to exercise our

will,  our active energy. To act, to work has become a need

for  the vast majority of mankind. So much so that when

absurd  conditions divorce a man or woman from useful

work, they  invent something to do, some futile and

senseless obligations  whereby to open out a field for their

active energy. They  invent a theory, a religion, a "social

duty"-- to persuade  themselves that they are doing

something useful. When  they dance, it is for a charity.

When they ruin themselves  with expensive dresses, it is to

keep up the position of the  aristocracy. When they do

nothing, it is on principle.

	 "We need to help our fellows, to lend a hand to the

coach  laboriously dragged along by humanity; in any

case, we buzz  round it," says Guyau. This need of lending

a hand is so  great that it is found among all sociable

animals, however  low in the scale. What is all the

enormous amount of activity spent uselessly in politics

every day but an expression of  the need to lend a hand to

the coach of humanity, or at least  to buzz around it .

	Of course this "fecundity of will," this thirst for

action,  when accompanied by poverty of feeling and an

intellect  incapable of creation, will produce nothing but a

Napoleon I or a Bismarck, wiseacres who try to force the

world to progress backwards. While on the other hand,

mental fertility  destitute of well developed sensibility

will bring forth such  barren fruits as literary and scientific

pedants who only hinder  the advance of knowledge.

Finally, sensibility unguided by  large intelligence will

produce such persons as the woman  ready to sacrifice

everything for some brute of a man, upon  whom she

pours forth all her love.

	 If life to be really fruitful, it must be so at once in

intelligence, in feeling and in will. This fertility in every

direction is life; the only thing worthy the name. For one

moment  of this life, those who have obtained a glimpse of

it give  years of vegetative existence. Without this

overflowing life,  a man is old before his time, an impotent

being, a plant that  withers before it has ever flowered.

	 "Let us leave to latter-day corruption this life that

is no  life," cries youth, the true youth full of sap that longs

to  live and scatter life around. Every time a society falls

into  decay, a thrust from such youth as this shatters

ancient economic, and political and moral forms to make

room for the  up-springing of a new life. What matter if

one or another  fall in the struggle! Still the sap rises. For

youth to live  is to blossom whatever the consequences! It

does not regret them.

	 But without speaking of the  heroic periods of

mankind, taking every-day existence,  is it  life to live in

disagreement with one's ideal ?

	 Now-a-days it is often said that men scoff at the

ideal.  And it is easy to understand why. The word has so

often  been used to cheat the simple-hearted  that a

reaction is inevitable and healthy. We too should like to

replace the word  "ideal," so often blotted and stained, by

a new word more in  conformity with new ideas.

 But whatever the word, the fact remains; every human 

being has his ideal. Bismarck had his--however strange--; 

a government of blood and iron. Even every philistine 	has 

his ideal, however low.

 But besides these, there is the human being who has con-

ceived a loftier ideal. The life of a beast cannot satisfy him. 

Servility, lying, bad faith, intrigue, inequality in human

relations fill him with loathing. How can he in his turn

become  servile, be a liar, and intriguer, lord it over

others? He catches  a glimpse of how lovely life might be

if better relations existed  among men; he feels in himself

the power to succeed in  establishing these better relations

with those he may meet on  his way. He conceives what is

called an ideal.

Whence comes this ideal? How is it fashioned by heredity 

on one side and the impressions of life on the other? We 

know not. At most we could tell the story of it more or 

less truly in our own biographies. But it is an actual fact --

variable, progressive, open to outside influences but

always  living. It is a largely unconscious feeling of what

would  give the greatest amount of vitality, of the joy of

life.

	 Life is vigorous, fertile. rich in sensation only on

condition of answering to this feeling of the ideal. Act

against this  feeling, and you feel your life bent back on

itself. It is no longer at one, it loses its vigor. Be untrue

often to your  ideal and you will end by paralyzing your

will, your active energy. Soon you will no longer regain

the vigor, the spontaneity of decision you formerly knew.

You are a broken man.

	 Nothing mysterious in all this, once you look upon

a human  being as a compound of nervous and cerebral

centers acting  independently. Waver between the various

feelings striving within you, and you will soon end by

breaking the harmony of the organism; you will be a sick

person without  will. The intensity of your life will

decrease. In vain will  you seek for compromises. Never

more will you be the complete, strong, vigorous being

you were when your acts were  in accordance with the

ideal conceptions of your brain.

	 There are epochs in which the moral conception

changes  entirely. A man perceives that what he had

considered moral  is the deepest immorality. In some

instances it is a custom,  a venerated tradition, that is

fundamentally immoral. In  others we find a moral system

framed in the interests of a  single class. We cast them

overboard and raise the cry  "Down with morality!" It

becomes a duty to act "immorally."

 	Let us welcome such epochs for they are epochs of

criticism. They are an infallible sign that thought is

working in society. A higher morality has begun to be

wrought out.

	 What this morality will be we have sought to

formulate,  taking as our basis the study of man and

animal.

 	We have seen the kind of morality which is even

now  shaping itself in the ideas of the masses and of the

thinkers.  This morality will issue no commands. It will

refuse once and for all to model individuals according to

an abstract  idea, as it will refuse to mutilate them by

religion, law or  government. It will leave to the

individual man full and  perfect liberty. It will be but a

simple record of facts, a science. And this science will say

to man: "If you are not  conscious of strength within you, if

your energies are only  just sufficient to maintain a

colorless, monotonous life, without strong impressions,

without deep joys, but also without  deep sorrows, well

then, keep to the simple principles of a just equality. In

relations of equality you will find probably  the maximum

of happiness possible to your feeble energies.

	"But if you feel within you the strength of youth, if

you wish to live, if you wish to enjoy a perfect, full and

overflowing life --that is, know the highest pleasure which

a living being can desire-- be strong, be great, be vigorous

in  all you do.

	 "Sow life around you. Take heed that if you

deceive, lie,  intrigue, cheat, you thereby demean yourself.

belittle yourself, confess your own weakness beforehand,

play the part of  the slave of the harem who feels himself

the inferior of his  master. Do this if it so pleases you, but

know that humanity will regard you as petty,

contemptible and feeble, and treat you as such. Having no

evidence of your strength, it will act towards you as one

worthy of pity-- and pity only.  Do not blame humanity if

of your own accord you thus  paralyze your energies. Be

strong on the other hand, and once  you have seen

unrighteousness and recognized it as such --inequity in

life, a lie in science, or suffering inflicted by another-- rise

in revolt against the iniquity, the lie or the injustice.

	"Struggle! To struggle is to live, and the fiercer the

struggle the intenser the life. Then you will have lived; 

and a  few hours of such life are worth years spent

vegetating.

	"Struggle so that all may live this rich, overflowing

life. And be sure that in this struggle you will find a joy

greater  than anything else can give."

	This is all that the science of morality can tell you.

Yours is the choice.