system, if it is to do any practical work in the world, requires that
the whole human character shall be profoundly altered; and secondly,
that the required alteration is one that may indeed be dreamt about, but
which can never possibly be made. Even were it made, the results would
not be splendid; but no matter how splendid they might be, this is of no
possible moment to us. There are few things on which it is idler to
speculate than the issues of impossible contingencies. And the
positivists would be talking just as much to the purpose as they do now,
were they to tell us how fast we should travel supposing we had wings,
or what deep water we could wade through if we were twenty-four feet
high. These last, indeed, are just the suppositions that they do make.
Between our human nature and the nature they desiderate there is a deep
and fordless river, over which they can throw no bridge, and all their
talk supposes that we shall be able to fly or wade across it, or else
that it will dry up of itself.

_Rusticus expectat dum defluat amnis, at ille
Labitur et labetur, in omne volubilis aevum._

So utterly grotesque and chimerical is this whole positive theory of
progress, that, as an outcome of the present age, it seems little short
of a miracle. Professing to embody what that age considers its special
characteristics, what it really embodies is the most emphatic negation
of these. It professes to rest on experience, and yet no Christian
legend ever contradicted experience more. It professes to be sustained
by proof, and yet the professions of no conjuring quack ever appealed
more exclusively to credulity.

Its appearance, however, will cease to be wonderful, and its real
significance will become more apparent, if we consider the class of
thinkers who have elaborated and popularised it. They have been men and
women, for the most part, who have had the following characteristics in
common. Their early training has been religious;[28] their temperaments
have been naturally grave and earnest; they have had few strong
passions; they have been brought up knowing little of what is commonly
called the world; their intellects have been vigorous and active; and
finally they have rejected in maturity the religion by which all their
thoughts have been coloured. The result has been this. The death of
their religion has left a quantity of moral emotions without an object;
and this disorder of the moral emotions has left their