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and Greek faiths, which by a natural process has produced the 

 religion of the modern world. — Again: a Pharisee, one Saul 

 of Tarsus, on the road to Damascus is prostrated by some 

 power to him invisible, and from being Christ's persecutor 

 he becomes His apostle. — Natural reaction, say they, — common 

 enough with ardent temperaments like his. Again : in the 

 16th century, a monk groaning and weeping in a German 

 convent, one day comes forth from his seclusion and proclaims to 

 an astonished world the inaugural words of the Reformation, — 

 " The just shall live by faith.'' Oh ! say they, Luther only 

 obeyed the instinct of the Germanic races, which ever sought a 

 spiritualistic religion, and revolted against the pretensions of 

 Some. 



In the present day a soul renounces the world, and tearing 

 itself from a life of dissipation and vanity, dedicates itself to 

 the service of God in love. They can only see in this the 

 abnormal working of a natural law to which physiology shall one 

 day give its correct nomenclature. Here, say they, is the only 

 philosophy of history possible, beyond these explanations there 

 can only be the arbitrary, the unforeseen, and science ignores 

 utterly the one and the other. I am not exaggerating ; this is 

 the predominant feeling in philosophical essays, scientific works, 

 and treatises, the way with which men pretend to unlock the 

 new science of the 19th century, — the critical history of 

 religions. And since religion cannot be separated from morals, 

 they apply the same method to both ; morality also, according 

 to them, becomes an affair of race and temperament, its only 

 rule is nature and physical law, and on a more exact science of 

 nature they would base what they call the true independent 

 morality which is to be the characteristic of the future. We have 

 hitherto believed that the true basis of morality was responsi- 

 bility, so that in shaking this, morality itself was disturbed. 

 Mistake, say they, — the feeling of responsibility is only an 

 illusion, which must disappear witli that of moral liberty, the 

 other illusion of a being subjected to unyielding laws ; and start- 

 ing from this principle they see in evil only a mistake, a disease 

 rather than a transgression, criminals are victims rather than 

 guilty men; here again temperament explains all. The asylum 

 must replace the prison, compassion take the place of justice. 

 For these self-styled superior minds, moral aberrations have a 

 singular attraction, and leaving sonorous denunciations to 

 magistrates and preachers, they curiously study each variation 

 of nature, they seek the fatal law that governs it, and flatter 

 themselves they shall one day be able to enunciate it in a pro- 

 position. All this is what we are told to-day with scientific 

 serenity, which disdains declamation. Yet look at these new 



