514 HEREDITY AND SELECTION IN SOCIOLOGY 



We have here the judgment of a man who was not a Catholic ; 

 of a man who set himself the task of constructing a system of 

 positive philosophy from which all metaphysical speculation 

 was to be rigidly excluded ; of a man who devoted all the 

 resources of his extraordinarily fertile intellect to the reorganisa- 

 tion of society on a new basis, which was destined in the mind 

 of its author to be at the antipodes of mysticism and metaphysics 

 — which was destined to supplant the religious organisation 

 which had decayed, and to replace it by an organisation founded 

 exclusively on scientific induction. And yet we find this man, 

 this foimder of the Positivist philosophy, whose knowledge of 

 history was unrivalled, borrowing the schema of his system 

 from the Catholic Church ; we find him rehabilitating the Middle 

 Ages ; we find him constantly appeahng to the discipline and 

 organisation of Catholicism. Nay, more, we find the system 

 which he founded, this anti-mystic, anti-metaphysical, scientific 

 system, ending finally in the most mystic of metaphysics; we 

 find it ending in a rehgion — a new reUgion, it may be, but a 

 reHgion none the less. Thus it is that, starting from principles 

 as wide apart as the poles are asunder, the fathers of the Church 

 and the founder of the Positivist philosophy both arrived at 

 the same conclusion as to the urgent social necessity of reHgion. 



And this has happened not with Auguste Comte alone. 

 Another philosopher, less profoundly erudite, perhaps, but 

 certainly possessed of greater natural genius than Comte — we 

 mean Friedrich Nietzsche — ^likewise set himself the task of 

 annihilating Christianity, of annihilating God. Nothing can 

 exceed in violence and in beauty of style Nietzsche's infuriated 

 attacks on Christianity, " the one undying stain on humanity," 

 as he fiercely denounced it, " the most perverse corruption of 

 humanity." And yet we find Nietzsche, the sworn foe of 

 Christianity ; Nietzsche, who by the mouth of his Zarathustra 

 declares God to be dead ; Nietzsche, the Atheist, the scofier, 

 the hater of gods ; we find him, too, ending in a reUgion. It 



