one has ever desired, more earnestly and
eagerly than I, to discover the foundations of the intellectual
religion; no one has ever felt more chilling disappointment in the
perception of the plain bare fact that the intellect gives morality,
philosophy, precious things indeed, but not religion. It is like seeking
art by science. Thousands of artists, whole schools from generation to
generation, have sought fine art through anatomy and perspective; and
although these sciences did not hinder the born artists from coming to
art at last, they did not ensure their safe arrival in the art-paradise;
in many instances they even led men away from art. So it is with the
great modern search for the intellectual religion; the idea of it is
scientific in its source, and the result of it, the last definite
attainment, is simply intellectual morality, not religion in the sense
which all humanity has attached to religion during all the ages that
have preceded ours. We may say that philosophy is the religion of the
intellectual; and if we go scrupulously to Latin derivations, it is so.
But taking frankly the received meaning of the word as it is used by
mankind everywhere, we must admit that, although high intellect would
lead us inevitably to high and pure morality, and to most scrupulously
beautiful conduct in everything, towards men, towards women, towards
even the lower and lowest animals, still it does not lead us to that
belief in the otherwise unbelievable, or to that detailed _cultus_
which is meant by religion in the universally accepted sense. It is
disingenuous to take a word popularly respected and attribute to it
another sense. Such a course is not strictly honest, and therefore not
purely intellectual; for the foundation of the intellectual life is
honesty.

The difficulty of the intellectual life is, that whilst it can never
assume a position of hostility to religion, which it must always
recognize as the greatest natural force for the amelioration of mankind,
it is nevertheless compelled to enunciate truths which may happen to be
in contradiction with dogmas received at this or that particular time.
That you may not suspect me of a disposition to dwell continually on
safe generalities and to avoid details out of timidity, let me mention
two cases on which the intellectual and scientific find themselves at
variance with the clergy. The clergy tell us that mankind descend from a
single pair, and that in the earlier ages th