Page:The age of Justinian and Theodora (Volume 1).djvu/312

 approach and win the favour of such a being have constituted the heaviest drag on civilization and progress; and, as man rises in the sphere of rationality, the highest lesson he can learn is to discard definitively all such dreams. He must convince himself that there is nothing divine, nothing supernatural, no providence but his own, that prayer is futile, piety impossible; and the sage may postulate that humanity is God until some higher divinity be discovered. The mythological terrors of antiquity are effete in the world of to-day, and any citizen who has learned to live uprightly should be above all religion, and free from the bondage of every superstition. By self-reliance and his own exertions alone can man be led upwards; his advancement depends on the extent to which he can penetrate the mystery of, and subdue the forces which surround him; and to preach the dominion of man over nature is the work of the modern prophet or apostle. By a retrospect of the past he is justified in cherish-*

of power and materials. The conception of God, when cleared of all irrelevancy, is merely that of a perpetual source of energy; and that we must find in the medium we exist in or nowhere. It is nugatory to talk of beginnings and endings when dealing with the infinite, unless as regards phases of phenomena; if there had to be an end of the universe, there would never have been a beginning.]*
 * [Footnote: of this solar system, there would seem to be much superfluous expenditure