618 HEREDITY AND SELECTION IN SOCIOLOGY 



is not a social force ; it is essentially individualist ; and religion 

 can hope to socialise the community only on condition that it 

 liberates itself from individuaUsm. In fact, it is the particular 

 weakness of our actual social organisation that idealism has 

 become more and more detached from that social organisation 

 which alone can render it efficacious as a social power. In 

 harmony with the prevailing tendency of our times, ideaHsm 

 has tended to become ever more individualist ; and thus the 

 great factor of social stabiUty and integration has been reduced 

 to impotence by being detached from its natural basis. 



We may go further ; and we may say that the loosening of the 

 bonds of religious organisation — of that organisation in which, 

 as Schaeffle says, idealism found its most concrete, its most 

 universal, and its most coherent expression — has done more to 

 destroy all ideaUsm, and to substitute for it the excessive indi- 

 viduahsm from which we suffer to-day, than anything else. 

 Let us turn once more to the phenomena of suicide. If Catho- 

 licism protects its adherents better against suicide than 

 Protestantism does, it can only be because CathoUcism is more 

 integrated than Protestantism ; because Catholicism possesses, 

 by virtue of this integration, a greater hold and influence over 

 the individual than Protestantism. And, indeed, the principles 

 on which Protestantism is founded are such as to render dis- 

 integration of the religious organisation easier ; it is a matter 

 of common observation that Protestantism does not constitute 

 such a compact and strongly coherent system as Catholicism. 

 As we have several times quoted Auguste Comte, we may quote 

 him again in this connection : 



" It is important," wrote Comte, " that we should have a clear notion 

 of those characteristic perversions, at first intellectual, and subsequently 

 moral, which . . . have invariably their real source in that dangerous 

 spiritual principle consecrated by Protestantism, according to which specu- 

 lative liberty is proclaimed for all without anyone being able to estabUsh 

 firmly the rules capable of governing the usage of this liberty." "■ 



1 Cours de PhilosopMe positive, v. 539, 540. 



