This like holds true for (4), although the connection is not so obvious.  For this reason it will be advisable to consider the point in more detail.

It has been already indicated that the founders of religions have made use of the survival of the soul after death to endeavor to lead mankind to live righteously, by threats of punishments or promises of reward, which will affect the soul after the death of the body.

It is precisely on this point that in the most highly developed religions there is the greatest falling off from the original conception of the after-effect of human conduct on the soul, and the most astounding things are inculcated by the Koran and other works with respect to this.

But here again we may separate the true kernel from the artificial shell, and reach the conclusion that good conduct is advantageous for the soul after the death of the body, and that bad conduct is detrimental.  In no other way can the Mohammedan paradise or the Christian hell be explained than as sheer anthropomorphic realizations of these facts, which can appeal even to the densest intellect.

What then is good conduct, or bad?

The question is easily asked, but without reference to external circumstances impossible to answer. Per se there is no good or bad conduct.  Under certain circumstances a vulgar, brutal murder may become a glorious and heroic act, a good deed in the truest sense of the word; as, for example, in the case of Charlotte Corday.  Nor must the view of one’s fellow creatures be accepted as a criterion of good or bad conduct, for different parties are apt to cherish diametrically opposed opinions on one and the same subject.  There remains then only one’s own inner feeling or conscience.  Good conduct awakes in this a feeling of pleasure, bad conduct a feeling of pain.  And by this alone can we discriminate.  Now let us further ask.  What sort of conduct produces in our conscience pleasure and what sort of conduct induces pain?  If we investigate a great number of special cases, we shall recognize that conduct which proves advantageous to the individual, to the family, to the state, and finally to mankind, produces a good conscience, and that conduct which is injurious to the same series give rise to a bad conscience.  If a collision of interests arise, it is the degree of relationship which determines the influence of conduct on the conscience.  As, for instance, among the clans in Scotland, a deed which is advantageous for the clan produces a good conscience, even if it be injurious to the state and to mankind.

The conscience is one of the mental faculties of man acquired by selection and rendered possible by the construction and development of the commonwealth of the state.  Conscience urges us to live rightly, that is, to do those things which will help ourselves and our family, whereby our fellow creatures according to their degree of relationship may be benefited.  These are good deeds, and they will merit from the teachers of religion much praise for the soul.  We find, therefore, that the only possible definition of a good deed is one which will benefit the series of germ cells arising from one individual, and further which will be of use to others with their own series of germ cells, and that in proportion to the degree of connection (relationship).