Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 162.djvu/25

 and known to be real, though less vividly felt at the moment than the dream he knows to be false. Positivist worship is here again the clothes without the essence. The essence of the religious prayer and meditation is that the imaginative effort and aspiration are felt to be a process of reaching out towards realities, and it is precisely this that Positivism drops out of its worship. The effort of imagination, the aspiration, the communing with other minds in spirit, are preserved, but the ob- jects are all unreal. The religious medi- tation aims at the fullest sense of reality; the Positivist attains to perfection only in the illusions of the mad-house. Reli- gion says to him who is in trial, "Your trial is but a dream compared with the happy reality which exists for God's ser- vants." Positivism says, " Your trial may be sad, but don't think of it ; live in dream- land." It is the remedy of one who takes to drink that he may forget the trials of life ; and let him who thinks that constant dram-drinking, and its consequent illu- sions, can give substantial comfort and make an unhappy life happy, rest content with the Positivist clothes of religion, and declare them to be as good as the reality they profess to replace.* And, finally, the effects of any general acceptance of Positivism on moral con- duct and moral progress would be the natural consequence of the nature of its belief and worship. A man may indulge in the pleasures of day-dreaming, but none, save a madman, will act on a dream as though it were truth. The goal of phys- ical progress is in sight, and the motive for scientific labors is untouched by Posi- tivism. But the goal both of moral con- duct for the individual, and moral prog- ress for the race, is in the world of spirits ; and if that world be only a dream no mo- tive is left for the self-denial involved in the pursuit of virtue. The moral hero must become, as soon as human nature has completely adjusted itself to this new creed, an ideal conception belonging to the past — noble to think on as the hero of chivalry is, with his armor, his battle- axe, and his lance in rest; but not to be imitated, because he is not adapted to the •intellectual conditions of the age. A man who went to the Franco-German war, • It will, I hope, be understood that I am speaking of the effects of religion in this life — of its practical working on earth. The *' need for religion," which Positivism professes to supply, is of course a need here. Of the life hereafter it is obviously irrelevant to speak, except so far as the hope for it is an important element in the working of religion here. And it has been alluded to so far and uo further in the text. accoutred after the fashion of Richard Coeur de Lion, would find his costume and weapons of little use against Krupp guns or mitrailleuse. And a man who, inspired by St. Bernard's moral greatness, attempted to imitate it, without religious faith himself, and in a world without faith, would soon find that all motive for con- sistent action of this nature was dissolved. He would find the type old-fashioned and quite unable to resist the onslaught of a belief which destroys the essential and central motive for moral heroism. Here then, again, in the domain of conduct, we have the conception left and the reality gone. We can still admire the beauty of self-devotion, but, as a practical reality, it is impossible. Once more the clothes without the substance. Clothes in every case. Phrases, emotions, ideas are kept; the essence of religion is gone. Surely if it is to be war to the knife between the philosophers and the old religion — if, in- deed, they think they have killed it — it would be more becoming in them to bury it clothes and all, and give forth a sigh over its grave, as Schopenhauer did, than to keep its clothes as perquisites where- with to array their own children. The former is, at all events, the ordinary pro- cedure of civilized warfare; the latter is rather suggestive of the public execu- tioner. But I have already dwelt too long upon the claim of the Positivist scheme to the title of "religion." It only needs that we should look closely at its features, and remain for a short time in its company, that we may find out how grotesquely un- like it is to all that mankind has hitherto meant by the term, and how completely it must fail of all practical helpfulness. The danger is that it may pass without close observation, and may sustain its claim by means of the clothing it has borrowed. If we hold intercourse with it, and listen to its voice, we become speedily convinced that it is not the voice of religion. Read- ers of /Esop's fables will remember that a certain animal once tried to pass himself off as a lion by putting on the lion's skin ; but his voice betrayed him. I do not mean to imply that the voice of Positivism is the voice of the ass, but it certainly is not that of the lion. All that remains now is to point, as shortly as may be, the moral to be drawn from what has preceded. The two essays of which I have spoken are perfectly agreed as to one thing — that the central features of the old theol- ogy are effete; that a Providence ruling the destiny of the world, who watches