50« COSMIC PIJILOSOPHY. [pt. ih. 



As the coral reef is built by millions of tiny polyps, each 

 giving up his little life to the process, until a stately island 

 arises in mid-ocean, so the ideal society of the future, with 

 its exemption from the ills \A'hich we now suffer, will be the 

 result of myriads of individual efforts towards greater com- 

 pleteness of life. Every temptation that is resisted, every 

 sympathetic impulse that is discreetly yielded to, every 

 noble aspiration that is encouraged, every sinful thought 

 that is repressed, every bitter word that is withheld, adds 

 its little item to the impetus of the great movement which 

 is bearing Humanity onwards toward a richer life and a 

 higher character. Out of individual rectitude comes the 

 rectitude and happiness of the community ; so that the ulti- 

 mate salvation of mankind is to be wrought out solely by 

 obedience to that religious instinct which, as shown in the 

 preceding chapter, urges the individual, irrespective of 

 utilitarian considerations, to live in conformity to nature's 

 requirements. "Nearer, my God, to thee," is the prayer, 

 dictated by the religious faith of past ages, to which the 

 deepest scientific analysis of the future may add new 

 meanings, but of which it can never impair the primary 

 significance. 



Thus with regard to its practical bearings upon human 

 conduct, the religious attitude of our scientific philosophy 

 seems to be absolutely identical with the religious attitude 

 of Christianity. We arrive at a deeper reason than has 

 hitherto been disclosed for the difference between our posi- 

 tion with reference to Christianity, and that which has been 

 assumed by Radicalism and by Positivism. It is not merely 

 that we refuse to attack Christianity because we recognize 

 its necessary adaptation to a certain stage of culture, not yet 

 passed by the average minds of the community ; it is that 

 we still regard Christianity as, in the deepest sense, our own 

 religion. Or, if a somewhat different form of statement be 

 preferred, we regard it as a faith which, precisely in the act 



