t writer, that[11] '_lives
nourished, and invigorated by_ [a purely human] _ideal have been, and
still may be, seen amongst us, and the appearance of but a single
example proves the adequacy of the belief_?'

I reply that the fact is entirely true, and the inference entirely
false. And this brings me at once to a point I have before alluded
to--to the most subtle source of the entire positivist error--the source
secret and unsuspected, of so much rash confidence.

The positive school can, and do, as we have seen, point to certain
things in life which have every appearance, at first sight, of adequate
moral ends. Their adequacy seems to be verified by every right feeling,
and also by practical experiment. But there is one great fact that is
forgotten. The positive school, when they deal with life, profess to
exhibit its resources to us wholly free from the false aids of
religion. They profess (if I may coin a word) to have _de-religionized_
it before they deal with it. But about this matter they betray a most
strange ignorance. They think the task is far simpler than it is. They
seem to look on religion as existing nowhere except in its pure form, in
the form of distinct devotional feeling, or in the conscious assents of
faith; and, these once got rid of, they fancy that life is
de-religionized. But the process thus far is really only begun; indeed,
as far as immediate results go, it is hardly even begun; for it is
really but a very small proportion of religion that exists pure. The
greater part of it has entered into combination with the acts and
feelings of life, thus forming as it were, a kind of amalgam with them,
giving them new properties, a new colour, a new consistence. To
_de-religionize_ life, then, it is not enough to condemn creeds and to
abolish prayers. We must further sublimate the beliefs and feelings,
which prayers and creeds hold pure, out of the lay life around us. Under
this process, even if imperfectly performed, it will soon become clear
that religion in greater or less proportions is lurking everywhere. We
shall see it yielded up even by things in which we should least look for
it--by wit, by humour, by secular ambition, by most forms of vice, and
by our daily light amusements. Much more shall we see it yielded up by
heroism, by purity, by affection, and by love of truth--by all those
things that the positivists most specially praise.

The positivists think, it would seem, that they had but to ki