WHAT IS RELIGION? 241 



The priest can plead but one of two pleas. Either 

 he is absolutely ignorant of the present progress of 

 human intelligence, which would seem impossible, and 

 in which case he is not worthy of his position, or else 

 he must plead the most complete deceit and hypocrisy. 1 

 No real progress can be effected till this deceit is 

 removed, and then morality will take its place. 2 



1 Moral, or ethical Materialism, is something quite distinct from 

 scientific materialism, and has nothing whatever in common with 

 the latter. This " actual " materialism proposes no other aim to 

 man in the course of his life than the most refined possible gratifica- 

 tion of his senses. It is based on the delusion that purely material 

 enjoyment can alone give satisfaction to man ; but as he can find 

 that satisfaction in no one form of sensuous pleasure, lie dashes on 

 weariedly from one to another. The profound truth that the 

 real value of life does not lie in material enjoyment, but in moral 

 action that true happiness does not depend upon external 

 possessions, but only in a virtuous course of life this is uiiknovyii 

 to ethical materialism. We therefore look in vain for such 

 materialism among naturalists and philosophers, whose highest 

 happiness is the intellectual enjoyment of Mature, and whose 

 highest aim is the knowledge of her laws. We find it in the 

 palaces of ecclesiastical princes, and in those hypocrites who, under 

 the outward mask of a pious worship of God, solely aim at hierar- 

 chical tyranny over, and material spoliation of, their fellow-men. 

 Blind to the infinite grandeur of the so-called ' raw material,' and 

 the glorious world of phenomena arising from it insensible to the 

 inexhaustible charms of Nature, and without a knowledge of her 

 laws they stigmatize all natural science, and the culture arising 

 from it, as sinful ' materialism,' while really it is this which they 

 themselves exhibit in a most objectionable form. Satisfactory proofs 

 of this are furnished, not only by the whole history of the ' infallible ' 

 Popes, with their long series of hideous crimes, but also by the 

 history of the morals of orthodoxy in every form of religion." 

 (" The History of Creation," Prof. Ernst Haeckel, 1892, vol. i. 

 p. 37.) 



2 Have we improved in morality ? Let us consider the following : 



K 



