184 COSMIC PHILOSUPIl V. [pt. i. 



proclaim that the religious sentiment finds its legitimate 

 satisfaction in the service of an idealized Humanity; 

 Cosniism, on the contrary, assigns to religion the same place 

 which it has always occupied, and affirms that the religious 

 sentiment must find satisfaction in the future, as in the past, 

 in the recognition of a Power which is beyond Humanity, 

 and upon which Humanity depends. The existence of God 

 — denied by Atheism and ignored by Positivism — is the 

 fundamental postulate upon which Cosmism bases its syn- 

 thesis of scientific truths. The infinite and absolute Power, 

 which Anthropomorphism has in countless ways sought to 

 define and limit by metaphysical formulas, thereby rendering 

 it finite and relative, is the Power which Cosmism refrains 

 from defining and limiting by metaphysical formulas, thereby 

 acknowledging so far as the exigencies of human speaking 

 and thinking will allow — that it is infinite and absolute. 

 Thus in the progress from Anthropomorphism to Cosmism 

 the religious attitude remains unchanged from the beginning 

 to the end. And thus the apparent antagonism between 

 Science and Eeligion, which is the abiding terror of timid 

 or superficial minds, and which the Positive Philosophy did 

 comparatively little to remove, is in the Cosmic Philosophy 

 utterly and for ever swept away. 



The further elucidation of these views must be postponed 

 until we come to treat in detail of the relations of science to 

 theism and religion. With this preliminary indication of a 

 theory to be hereafter more fully unfolded, the present 

 chapter might be brought to a close, were it not that our 

 conclusions have been elicited through a criticism of the 

 theory of Comte, and that, at the beginning of our discussion, 

 certain expectations were held out which the close of the 

 discussion may seem to have belied. Conformity to the 

 requirements of sound criticism demands that something 

 more should be said upon this point. 



We started in the belief that we were about to trace the 



