RELIGION AFTER THE WAR n 



hundreds of years will mankind have travelled far enough 

 beyond it to be able to see it in its true perspective. 



And in my view the great courageous men who inci- 

 dentally destroyed the sanction of Christianity did much more 

 than leave us with what Mr. Adams Gowans Whyte in his 

 excellent little book defines as " the religion of the open mind." 

 For myself I do not understand how religion and the open 

 mind can go together. Religion surely implies that the mind 

 is no longer open. Religion can only imply that the mind is 

 genuinely convinced that the position which it has taken up 

 is impregnable. Mr. Whyte's object in employing the word 

 " religion " is clear and justified, but we must not be misled 

 by that highly dangerous noun. I would maintain and I 

 doubt not Mr. Whyte also that the aforesaid great courageous 

 men left us with a conviction of impregnability which is the 

 equivalent of a religion, the conviction that nothing matters 

 so much as the facts. The desire for truth, the joy in truth 

 for its own sake, must and will be to the future what dogmatic 

 supernatural religion was to the past. The statement that 

 humanly ascertained truth comes first, and must come first, 

 in importance may be a dogma. It is at any rate a dogma 

 which is based upon both instinct and reason, and not upon 

 texts, legends, and guesswork. We are bound to accept it 

 because at our present stage of evolution we cannot conceive 

 the possibility of its contrary. And we do accept it with an 

 enthusiasm which will match the enthusiasm of any apostle 

 of a religious creed. Inseparable from it is the idea of human 

 justice. 



The ascertainment of the facts cf the universe, the facing 

 of those facts, and the doing of justice according to those facts 

 here is the triple inspiration of the future inspirers of the 

 race. You may call it religious, or spiritual, or moral, or all 

 these, or you may deny that it is either spiritual or religious 

 or moral, as your fancy pleases ; but it is all the inspiration 

 that will be available within any period of time that we can 

 now envisage. If you say sadly that it is not enough for 

 you, I say in answer that it is enough for me and for the 

 great majority of the minds with which I am acquainted. It 

 provides me with all the " religious " emotions which I need. 

 A popular " religion " may well develop out of it, and if it 

 does the name of Comte will rise almost to the very centre of 

 the firmament and stay there, for such a religion could not 

 ultimately repudiate its debt to Comtism. But at first the 

 religion might not be recognizable as the offspring of its 



