For
the notion commonly entertained that the practice of virtue gives us a
claim upon the Divine Exchequer (so to speak), and the habit of acting
virtuously for the sake of maintaining our credit in society, and ensuring
our prosperity in the next world,--in so thinking and acting we
misapprehend the true inwardness of the matter. To cultivate virtue
because its pays, no matter what the sort of coin in which payment is
looked for, is to be the victims of a lamentable delusion. For such virtue
makes each man jealous of his neighbor; whereas the aim of Providence is
to bring about the broadest human fellowship. A man's physical body
separates him from other men; and this fact disposes him to the error that
his nature is also a separate possession, and that he can only be "good"
by denying himself. But the only goodness that is really good is a
spontaneous and impersonal evolution, and this occurs, not where self-
denial has been practised, but only where a man feels himself to be
absolutely on the same level of desert or non-desert as are the mass of
his fellow-creatures. There is no use in obeying the commandments, unless
it be done, not to make one's self more deserving than another of God's
approbation, but out of love for goodness and truth in themselves, apart
from any personal considerations.
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