SOCIETY A RELIGIOUS ORGANISATION 537 



M. de Roberty is perfectly right in asserting that these things 

 are not foreign to sociology. And if love play so great a role in 

 sociology ; if it be capable of moving mountains, and of trans- 

 forming the destinies of humanity for thousands of years ; what 

 does this mean, if not that idealism is the great secret of the 

 history of nations ? For what can constitute a higher form of 

 idealism than love ? And even if, as M. de Roberty asserts, 

 the religions are worn-out superstitions, nevertheless, on his 

 own admission, it is the torch of ideaUsm, the torch of supra - 

 rationalism, which must light the path of human evolution in 

 the future as it has lighted it in the past. It is on faith that 

 M. de Roberty falls back, on the faith which he declares to be 

 the most energetic stimulus of action ; for love is faith, it con- 

 stitutes one of the purest and most exalted forms of faith, and 

 it is because it is a faith that it has worked those wonders to 

 which M. de Roberty pays eloquent tribute. 



Thus, here again, we find one of the most eminent of sociolo- 

 gists, one who has been most associated with the progress of 

 sociological science, falling back on a supra-rational sanction 

 as the essential requisite of social integration. And if a supra- 

 rational sanction be indeed a condition sine qua non of social 

 integration, and therefore of social stabiUty, we may conclude 

 that every stable and integrated society is, by reason of its stability 

 and integration, at the same time a religious organisation. For 

 a supra-rational sanction is a religious sanction ; it is a sanction 

 which is not limited to the individual reason alone ; it is a 

 sanction which, transcending the individual, aspires to univer- 

 sality ; and which, to be effective enough to secure adequate 

 social integration, must be an universal or quasi-universal 

 sanction. 



But what sanction possesses this necessary degree of universaUty 

 if not the religious sanction ? Deprive morality, as Eduard 

 von Hartmann has said, of its metaphysical basis, and we 

 deprive it of that imperative character which all morality, if 



