to be accepted by any but an insignificant fraction, must find a response not only in the intellects, but in the emotions of those for whom it is designed.
This, it appears to me, is the weak point of Positivism. Auguste Comte, having abolished all that in the general mind constitutes religion at all, attempted to compose a faith for his disciples by the merely arbitrary exercise of his own ingenuity. He perhaps did not consider that in all history there is no example of a religion being invented by an individual thinker. It is like attempting to sell a commodity for which there is no demand. Even if his philosophical principles should be accepted by the whole of Europe, there can be no reason why the special observances he recommends should be adopted, or the special saints whom he places in the calendar be adored. Those who receive his philosophy will have no need for his ceremonies. While even if ceremonies cannot be entirely dispensed with; it is not the mere fact of a solitary thinker planning it in his own mind that can ever ensure the adoption of a ritual.
Very different has been the procedure of the prophets of whom we are now to speak. Intellectually, they were no doubt far inferior to the founder of the Positive Philosophy. But emotionally, they were fitted for the part which he unsuccessfully endeavored to play. They entered into the religious feelings of their countrymen, and gave those feelings a higher expression than had yet been found for them. Instinctively fixing on some conspicuous part of the old religion, they made that the starting-point for the development of the new. They reformed, but the reformation linked itself to some conviction that was already deeply rooted in the nature of their converts. They assumed boundless authority; but it was authority to proclaim a pre-existing truth, not to spin out of their purely personal ideas of fitness a system altogether disconnected from the past evolution of religion, and to impose that system upon the remainder of mankind.
Section I.—Confucius.[1]
The life of the prophet of China is not eventful. It has*
- ↑ After some hesitation, I have determined to adhere to the Latinized
