Conversely, hate of others tends to bring about their
misery. When this close and intimate connection of love
with happiness is realised, it will be perceived that the test
question — ^whether an eternity of love at the cost of con-
tinual pain would be ethically satisfactory — ^is really mean-
ingless and self-contradictory, supposing the conditions of such
an eternal Ufe to have any analogy with hfe in the present.
It is, of course, not to be denied that, in the present un-
equally ethical condition of society, a virtuous individual may
suffer. ' I altogether decline,' says Dr. Rashdall, ' to pro-
nounce evSalfjLoiv, or in the highest possible degree "blessed,"
a man who has enjoyed twenty years of unbroken Virtue in
a loathsome dungeon, cut off from books or human society,
and afflicted by perpetual toothache or a succession of
other tortures.' ^ Now we may point out that in propor-
tion as there is a growth of love in society, so will the inflic-
tion of just such tortures on the innocent tend to decrease.
Indeed, the sorrow of hfe for the most part springs, directly
or indirectly, from a failure somewhere of ethical love.
Were there no selfishness, there would be no injustice done
either to the lives of others through disregard, or to one's
own life through ignorance, carelessness, or indulgence.
Mankind would know nothing of the misery incurred by the
activity of such poisons as alcohol and S5^hilis. The world
would never experience the suffering which arises from greed
in private, social, national, and international Mfe, nor would
they feel the pains that hatred inflicts in a variety of forms.
