378 PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 



specify in greater detail. First of all it emphasised the 

 distinction between Religion and Theology ; most of the 

 writers agreeing that religious beliefs of some kind were 

 essential and necessary, whilst most of them objected to 

 a special theological setting. At the same time even a 

 religious teacher like Martineau maintains that morality 

 can exist without religion, which is not the foundation 

 but the highest consummation of morality ; l whilst, on 

 the other side, Sir James Stephen concludes " that the 

 question of truth must precede the question of goodness 

 and cannot be determined by any answer which may be 

 given to the latter question." We thus have a distinct 

 statement that morality and the moral law are some- 

 thing innate or intuitive to the human soul, a view 

 which had found its classical expression in Kant's 

 ' Categorical Imperative,' and, on the other side, we 

 have an equally emphatic declaration " that the know- 

 ledge of the good must depend upon a knowledge of 

 what is true and real." 

 65. A second position, brought out clearly by Mr Frederic 



Comtian 



view. Harrison, is the Comtian principle that " acknowledges 



1 This conception of the relation passage indicates clearly what is 



of Ethics and Religion was worked more fully developed in the larger 



out in great fulness in Martineau's work, that the term Religion cannot 



larger Works mentioned above. be smoothed or levelled down to 



He there says : " Ethics must be 

 treated before Religion : not that 

 they are an absolute condition of 



a belief in or, if such were pos- 

 sible, a worship of, mere ideals ; a 

 view of its nature defended in a 



its beginning : not that they always ; masterly way and in striking Ian- 

 involve it as their end ; but that guage by Sir J. R. Seeley in his 

 they implicitly contain the re- ! anonymously published treatise 

 sources whence Religion, in the ' Natural Religion ' (1882). Accord- 

 higher form which alone we can ingly a criticism of this tnuch- 

 practically care to test, derives its admired volume forms for Mar- 

 availing characteristics, its dim- tineau the Introduction to his 

 culties and its glories" ('A Study ' Study of Religion. ' 

 of Religion,' vol. i. p. 19). This 



