himself alone. If, however, by "aspiration" Miss Cobbe only means mere futile longing after good apart from effort to realise it, that will certainly disappear with the invertebrate folk who feel it, as the race grows stronger and more rational.
"Again, repentance as well as aspiration will disappear under the snows of Atheism". Repentance, it is explained, is not the "sense of dissatisfaction" with oneself after having yielded to the lower appetites and passions, as defined by Darwin, but is an "awful convulsion of the soul", an "ordeal", the "vivid experiences of penitence and restoration". Awful convulsions may be seen at any revival meeting, where sinners writhe on the floor, proclaiming their own vileness and crouching and cringing for forgiveness before "an offended God". Such degrading exhibitions will, indeed, have ceased in "a faithless world". To awful convulsions will have succeeded sober and dignified regret for wrong-doing, coupled with a manful resolution to repair as far as is possible any injury inflicted on others, whether of actual aggression or of evil example. It is hardly an argument which will recommend Theism to the rational that losing Theism we shall lose spiritual hysterics.
Private prayer will be given up, of course, when belief in God has vanished, and "with aspiration, repentance, and prayer renounced and forgotten", Miss Cobbe considers that the "inner life" will be made "easy". My blinded eyes fail to see why a man's life should become ignobly easy because he is forced to be self-reliant instead of being dependent on God. A child's legs do not grow strong if he is allowed to walk with the support of leading-strings or of a "go-cart". They grow strong when he is left to trust to them only for support. The easy fashion of leaning on the divine "go-cart" has rendered flabby the muscles of Humanity; they will grow hard and elastic only when men learn to walk alone.
"Christian charity" will vanish in "a faithless world", and this because "the charity of Science is not merely different from the charity of religion; it is an opposite thing altogether. Its softest word is Væ Victis! . . . . Science says, 'The supreme law of nature is the survival of the fittest; and that law, applied to human morals, means the remorseless crushing down of the unfit'." Miss Cobbe's blind and ignorant hatred of Science comes out strongly in this passage; the "survival of the fittest" in the struggle
