314 
What is Religion? [June, 
production. Imagination in lieu of learning becomes the 
basis of the arguments, and such authors (as did George 
Sands, but without her powers) proclaim the necessity of a 
New Messiah, wherein moral obligation and duty based, on 
religious sentiments are to be erased from the mind. 
Comte tried this system, when his philosophy was found 
inadequate to satisfy humanitarian needs ; even his followers 
confess the mess he made of it. This positive science 
is frequently quoted, and has found able defenders, but none 
of them advocate the “ Nouveau Grand-Etre Supreme.” “ A 
gigantic fetish, turned out bran-new by M. Comte’s own 
hands, reigned ” instead of the displaced Dieu. Who, in 
the now day are they who come forward to explain the 
mystery and gaze unblinking into the depths of the light, 
and measure the immeasurable vastness to a hair ? ” “ They 
step down to the people with stately step and voice of au- 
thority, and deliver their twopenny tablets as if there was 
some Divine authority for the wretched nonsense recorded 
there.” What does all this philosophical “ friskiness ” lead 
to ? Their professors are so wonderfully sagacious that they 
flounder at every step ; so clear-sighted that they cannot see 
existing things; their “ extinguishing” genius would “ put 
out every light sufficient for the conduct of common men.” 
Oh ! men of genius never take heed of duty ; it is the 
manacles of slaves, and when you have grown sick of your 
liberty assert license, and scoff at the morals and religions 
of men who possess them. What are their feelings and 
opinions ? Take refuge in your philosophy ; never mind 
whether it has consonance, intelligibility, or logic ; stick to 
it as Diogenes did to his tub ; if it answers no other purpose 
it will at least show that you have a pride in your opinions. 
Take no heed how often they have been refuted, or how 
stale the propositions ; never heed that they are nonsense, 
so that some scheme is preached which shall end in 
annihilation or in a rehabilitation in some material pheno- 
menon. 
The key-note of the new philosophy is “ that man is the 
measure of the universe.” We are further told “ that man 
sees himself mirrored in Nature,” — what may this mean ? — 
and “no man has defined the ultimate limits of Nature.” 
Perhaps there are some far depths only discoverable by the 
Hylo-Idealists : its Messiah steps in to aid with a note, “ Man 
knows and feels that Nature is mirrored in himself, being 
the image of his Ego, and not vice versa.” The Ego may be 
the result of natural fadts, but then certainly not isolated. 
Where in Nature — that is, in phenomena — are we to discover 
