SPIRITUAL BASIS OF SOCIAL LIFE 509 



those idealistic principles which cemented European society in 

 the Middle Ages. Because science has raised the industrial 

 prosperity of Western nations to undreamed-of heights ; because 

 science has enabled man to extend ever further his domination 

 over the untamed forces of Nature ; science has also considered 

 itself to be in a position to assume, as Professor Berthelot has 

 claimed, the moral and intellectual direction of society. But, 

 in its endeavour to take the place of the ancient forces of social 

 integration, in its endeavour to give to life an ideal and a value 

 and a meaning, science, as Brunetiere has said, has ended in 

 bankruptcy. 



What is the lesson which this bankruptcy of science teaches 

 U5 ? Is it not, to use the words of the Times which we have 

 quoted, that " upon the material foundation of modem science 

 must be superimposed the moral structure of an older age "? 

 Is it not Auguste Comte himself, the founder of the Positivist 

 school, who has spoken of " the happy and capital influence on 

 the general perfectioning of our sociabihty which the proper 

 introduction of a real spiritual power can exercise, indispensable 

 institution of which all philosophers should be unanimous in 

 desiring the reorganisation on an intellectual basis at once more 

 direct, more extended, and more durable "?i In our Western 

 civiHsation, to-day as always, if we wish to regenerate society, 

 we must commence by reorganising its spiritual basis in accord- 

 ance with the principle that the organic and material prosperity 

 of society is dependent on an idealistic infrastructure more 

 fundamental stUl. 



The question then arises. Upon what basis can Western society 

 be reorganised, so that its integration and cohesion be reaffirmed ? 

 Professor Durkheim, from whom we have so largely quoted, and 

 who is incontestably one of the most emiaent of Hving sociologists, 

 treats reHgion as a negligible factor, and he is by no means the 



1 A. Comte, Cows de Philosophie positive, v. 268. Paris, fifth edition, 

 1893. 



