49 



of the Lord, and when the miseries of this 

 " valley of tears " will find^an eternal com- 

 pensation in Paradise, gives more vigour to 

 the desire of a little "terrestrial Paradise" 

 down here for the unhappy and the less 

 fortunate who are the most numerous. 



Hartmann and Guyau* have shown that 

 the evolution of religious beliefs can be thus 

 summarised : all religions have within them- 

 selves the promise of happiness, but primitive 

 religions admit that the happiness wilP be 

 realised during the life itself of the individual, 

 and later religions, by an excess of reaction, 

 transport it outside this'mortal world 'after 

 death; in the last phase this realisation of 

 happiness is again replaced' in human life, no 

 longer in the short moment of individual 

 existence, but in the continued evolution 

 of the whole of humanity. 



On this side again, socialism is joined to 

 religious evolution and tends f to substitute 

 itself for religion because it desires precisely 

 that humanity should have in itself its own 

 " terrestrial paradise " . without having to 

 wait for it in a "something beyond," which, 

 to say the least, is very problematical. 



Also it has been very justly remarked that 

 the socialist movement has numerous charac- 

 teristics common, for instance, to primitive 



* What is predominant, however, in religious beliefs is 

 the hereditary or traditional sentimental factor ; that is 

 what makes them always respectable, if they are pro- 

 fessed in good faith, and often even sympathetic and 

 that precisely on account of the candid and delicate 

 sensibility of the persons among whom religious faith is 

 the most vital and sincere. 



