Note 66 — A LECTURE

(p. 36). This testimony to the principle of summation likewise reappears as often as in a theory based upon egoistic and utilitarian grounds, the notion of God is employed in the construction of ethics (e.g. Locke; Fechner in his work on the highest good; cf. also for Leibnitz, Trendelenburg, Histor. Beiträge, vol. ii. p. 245). God, so runs their argument, loves each of His creatures, and therefore their totality more than the single individual; He therefore approves and rewards the sacrifice of the individual to the whole, while disapproving and punishing self-seeking injury.

In the desire after immortality also, the influence of the principle of summation is manifest. Thus Helmholtz, (über die Entstehung des Planetensystems, lecture delivered at Heidelberg and Cologne, 1871), in seeking to offer a hopeful prospect to those who cherish this desire, says: “The individual (if that which we achieve can ennoble the lives of those who succeed us) may face fearlessly the thought that the thread of his own consciousness will one day be broken. But to the thought of a final annihilation of the race of living mortals, and with them, the fruits of the striving of all past generations, even men of minds so unfettered and great as Lessing and David Strauss could scarcely reconcile themselves.” When it is scientifically shown that the earth will one day be incapable of supporting living beings, then, he thinks, the need of immortality will irresistibly return, and we shall feel bound to cast about for something which will afford us the possibility of assuming it.