Thus positive
thought reduces all religions to ideals created by man; and as such, not
only admits that they have had vast influence, but teaches us also that
we in the future must construct new ideals for ourselves. Only there
will be this difference. We shall now know that they are ideals, we
shall no longer mistake them for objective facts. But our positive
thinkers forget this. They forget that the ideals that were once active
in the world were active amongst people who thought that they were more
than ideals, and who very certainly did mistake them for facts; and they
forget how different their position will be, as soon as their true
nature is recognised. There is no example, so far as I know, to be found
in all history, of men having been stimulated or affected in any
important way--none, at any rate, of their having been restrained or
curbed--by a mere ideal that was known to have no reality to correspond
to it. A child is frightened when its nurse tells it that a black man
will come down the chimney and take it away. The black man, it is true,
is only an ideal; and yet the child is affected. But it would cease to
be affected the instant it knew this.

As we go on with our enquiry these considerations will become plainer to
us. But enough has even now been said to show how distinct the present
position is from any that have gone before it, and how little the
experience of the past is really fitted to reassure us. Greek and Roman
thought was positive, in our sense of the word, only in a very small
degree. The thought of the other ancient empires was not positive at
all. The oldest civilisation of which any record is left to us--the
civilisation of Egypt--was based on a theism which, of all other
theisms, most nearly approaches ours. And the doctrine of a future life
was first learnt by the Jews from their masters during the Captivity. We
search utterly in vain through history for any parallel to our own
negations.

I have spoken hitherto of those peoples only whose history more or less
directly has affected ours. But there is a vast portion of the human
race with which, roughly speaking, our progress has had no connection;
and the religions of these races, which are now for the first time
beginning to be accurately studied, are constantly being appealed to in
support of the positive doctrines. Thus it is urged by Mr. Leslie
Stephen that _'the briefest outline of the religious history of mankind
shows that creed