l is not a theist after the manner of Socrates;
his good is not a power. Nor would representing it to be such long
help his case; for an ideal hypostasised into a cause achieves only a
mythical independence. The least criticism discloses that it is
natural laws, zoological species, and human ideals, that have been
projected into the empyrean; and it is no marvel that the good should
attract the world where the good, by definition, is whatever the world
is aiming at. The hypostasis accomplished by Mr. Russell is more
serious, and therefore more paradoxical. If I understand it, it may be
expressed as follows: In the realm of eternal essences, before
anything exists, there are certain essences that have this remarkable
property, that they ought to exist, or at least that, if anything
exists, it ought to conform to them. What exists, however, is deaf to
this moral emphasis in the eternal; nature exists for no reason; and,
indeed, why should she have subordinated her own arbitrariness to a
good that is no less arbitrary? This good, however, is somehow good
notwithstanding; so that there is an abysmal wrong in its not being
obeyed. The world is, in principle, totally depraved; but as the good
is not a power, there is no one to redeem the world. The saints are
those who, imitating the impotent dogmatism on high, and despising
their sinful natural propensities, keep asserting that certain things
are in themselves good and others bad, and declaring to be detestable
any other saint who dogmatises differently. In this system the
Calvinistic God has lost his creative and punitive functions, but
continues to decree groundlessly what is good and what evil, and to
love the one and hate the other with an infinite love or hatred.
Meanwhile the reprobate need not fear hell in the next world, but the
elect are sure to find it here.

What shall we say of this strangely unreal and strangely personal
religion? Is it a ghost of Calvinism, returned with none of its old
force but with its old aspect of rigidity? Perhaps: but then, in
losing its force, in abandoning its myths, and threats, and rhetoric,
this religion has lost its deceptive sanctimony and hypocrisy; and in
retaining its rigidity it has kept what made it noble and pathetic;
for it is a clear dramatic expression of that human spirit--in this
case a most pure and heroic spirit--which it strives so hard to
dethrone. After all, the hypostasis of the good is only an
unfortunate incide