THE PROPOSED SUBSTITUTES FOR RELIGION. 



429 



opinion of the world ; to whom at death we re- 

 turn ; and our relations to whom, together with 

 his own nature, are an assurance that, according 

 as we promote or fail to promote his design by 

 self-improvement, and the improvement of our 

 kind, it will be well or ill for us in the sum of 

 things. This is an hypothesis evidently separable 

 from belief in a revelation, and from any special 

 theory respecting the next world, as well as from 

 all dogma and ritual. It may be true or false 

 in itself, capable of demonstration or incapable. 

 We are concerned here solely with its practical 

 efficiency, compared with that of the proposed 

 substitutes. It is only necessary to remark that 

 there is nothing about the religious hypothesis as 

 here stated, miraculous, supernatural, or myste- 

 rious, except so far as those epithets may be ap- 

 plied to anything beyond the range of bodily 

 sense, say the influence of opinion or affection. 

 A universe self-made, and without a God, is at 

 least as great a mystery as a universe with a 

 God ; in fact, the very attempt to conceive it in 

 the mind produces a mortal vertigo which is a 

 bad omen for the practical success of Cosmic 

 Emotion. 



For this religion are the service and worship 

 of Humanity likely to be a real equivalent in any 

 respect, as motive power, as restraint, or as com- 

 fort ? Will the idea of life in God be adequate- 

 ly replaced by that of an interest in the condi- 

 tion and progress of Humanity, as they may af- 

 fect us and be influenced by our conduct, to- 

 gether with the hope of human gratitude and 

 fear of human reprobation after death, which 

 the Comtists endeavor to organize into a sort of 

 counterpart of the day of judgment ? 



It will probably be at once conceded that the 

 answer must be in the negative as regards the 

 immediate future and the mass of mankind. The 

 simple truths of religion are intelligible to all, 

 and strike all minds with equal force, though 

 they may not have the same influence with all 

 moral natures. A child learns them perfectly at 

 its mother's knee. Honest ignorance in the mine, 

 on the sea, at the forge, striving to do its coarse 

 and perilous duty, performing the lowliest func- 

 tions of humanity, contributing in the humblest 

 way to human progress, itself scarcely sunned by 

 a ray of what more cultivated natures would deem 

 happiness, takes in as fully as the sublimest phi- 

 losopher the idea of a God who sees and cares for 

 all, who keeps account of the work well done or 

 the kind act, marks the secret fault, and will here- 

 after make up to duty for the hardness of its pres- 

 ent lot. But a vivid interest — such an interest as 



will act both as a restraint and as a comfort — in 

 the condition and future of humanity, can surely 

 exist only in those who have a knowledge of his- 

 tory, sufficient to enable them to embrace the 

 unity of the past, and an imagination sufficiently 

 cultivated to glow with anticipation of the future. 

 For the bulk of mankind the humanity-worship- 

 er's point of view seems unattainable, at least 

 within any calculable time. 



As to posthumous reputation, good or evil, it 

 is, and always must be, the appanage of a few 

 marked men. The plan of giving it substance by 

 instituting separate burial-places for the virtuous 

 and the wicked is perhaps not very seriously pro- 

 posed. Any such plan involves the fallacy of a 

 sharp division where there is no clear moral line, 

 besides postulating, not only an unattainable 

 knowledge of men's actions, but a knowledge, 

 still more manifestly unattainable, of their hearts. 

 Yet we cannot help thinking that, with the men 

 of intellect, to whose teaching the world is lis- 

 tening, this hope of posthumous reputation, or, 

 to put it more fairly, of living in the gratitude and 

 affection of their kind by means of their scien- 

 tific discoveries and literary works, exerts an in- 

 fluence of which they are hardly conscious ; it 

 prevents them from fully feeling the void which 

 the annihilation of the hope of future existence 

 leaves in the hearts of ordinary men. 



Besides, so far as we are aware, no attempt 

 has yet been made to show us distinctly what 

 " humanity " is, and wherein its " holiness " con- 

 sists. If the theological hypothesis is true, and 

 all men are united in God, humanity is a substan- 

 tial reality ; but otherwise we fail to see that it is 

 anything more than a metaphysical abstraction 

 converted into an actual entity by philosophers 

 who are not generally kind to metaphysics. Even 

 the unity of the species is far from settled ; science 

 still debates whether there is one race of men, or 

 whether there are more than a hundred. Man 

 acts on man, no doubt ; but he also acts on other 

 animals, and other animals on him. Wherein does 

 the special unity or the special bond consist? 

 Above all, what constitutes the " holiness ? " In- 

 dividual men are not holy ; a large proportion of 

 them are very much the reverse. Why is the ag- 

 gregate holy? Let the unit be a " complex phe- 

 nomenon," an "organism," or whatever name 

 science may give it, what multiple of it will be a 

 rational object of worship ? 



For our own part, we cannot conceive worship 

 being offered by a sane worshiper to any but a 

 conscious being, in other words, to a person. The 

 fetich-worshiper himself probably invests his fe- 



