Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 162.djvu/24

 and therefore, as much after death as be- fore it, and often, indeed, much more after death than before it."* It is breaking a butterfly on the wheel to insist upon the poor woman's failure to gain consolation from such thoughts. Or, take again the thought of human progress, which is sup- posed to be so soul-inspiring. What does it come to if with the persistence of grief she asks for a concrete instance? I sup- pose she must be told to think of the electric telegraph, or of the steam-plough. What, in short, has Positivism to offer to those in distress? Only illusions and dreams. I do not mean in every case untrue dreams. An historical play may represent true facts, but they are not a part of the spectator's life, or of the reality with which he is or ever will be in con- tact. And similarly for Positivism to soothe anguish by bidding you think on facts relative to human progress is to bid you forget what are facts to you in what are dreams to you. Christianity bids you dwell on a hope and a reality connected with your own life — tells us that God is with you and will comfort you, and will make it good to you in the future if you are faithful to him in time of trial. Posi- tivism bids you not mind your trial, be- cause somebody else has been good or successful — bids Mrs. Jones not cry at her son's death, because Mrs. Smith has just added another baby to the human race ; and if Mrs. Jones be patient enough and hopeful enough to pursue her ques- tioning yet further, and ask why it should give her consolation and hope that an- other or many others are happy, she will be told that she is only a part of the great being, and that evil and woe, of which her loss is a part, are swallowed up in the tide of progress and do not matter. She should rejoice in the progress of the great being, and remember that it is the only concrete reality, and that she is in fact only an abstract part of it. At this point she will, I think, with a sigh desist from further questioning. Rasselas, prince of Abyssinia, having searched long and vain- ly for one who should give him practical guidance as to how he might find hap- piness in this life, came at last upon a philosopher who with much confidence in- sisted that the road was plain. It con- sisted in living according to nature — in acting upon one simple and intelligible maxim, "that deviation from nature is deviation from happiness." " ' Sir,' said already referred to. the prince, with great modesty, 'as I, like the rest of mankind, am desirous of felic- ity, my closest attention has been fixed on your discourse ; I doubt not the truth of a position which a man so learned has so confidently advanced. Let me only know what it is to live according to nature?* 'When I find young men so humble and so docile,' said the philosopher, ' I can deny them no information which my studies have enabled me to afford. To live according to nature is to act always with due regard to the fitness arising from the relations and qualities of causes and effects; to concur with the great and un- changeable scheme of universal felicity; to co-operate with the general disposition and tendency of the present system of things.' The prince soon found that this was one of the sages whom he should un- derstand less as he heard him longer. He, therefore, bowed and was silent ; and the philosopher supposing him satisfied . . . rose up and departed with the air of a man that had co-operated with the pres- ent system." To sum up, then, the contrast between Positivism and religion under Mr. Harri- son's three heads — belief, worship, con- duct. Religion offers belief in a really existing Superior Power, in whom it is reasonable to trust, who will, in return for our trust and fidelity, guide «s in life and bring us through the darkness of this world into light and happiness. Posi- tivism bids us keep the feeling of trust without the reason for trust; bids us trust in forces which we know to be untrust- worthy, so far as our own future is con- cerned, and which many of the deepest thinkers consider to promise no ultimate benefit for our race. That is to say, Posi- tivism bids us keep the feeling after its motive is gone — keep the clothes after the substance is destroyed. And, to help our minds to sustain the illusion which this implies, it uses phrases which, as originally expressing realities, readily call up the feelings and ideas which those realities claimed as their due. Thus it speaks of a Supreme Being, a Power con- trolling our life, of immortality, and even of sacraments. So much for belief. Next as to worship. The religious prayer and meditation consisted in communing with real persons, unseen but trusted, and in making vivid by force of imagination what was believed to be real. Just as one who is haunted by a nightmare may make an effort to throw off his unhappy illusions, and bring his mind to dwell on the com- parative happiness of his real life — real
 * See Mr. Harrison's Address for New Year's Eve