and peoples, have spread their light broadcast, and philosophy finally
is permitted to say a word, every faith founded on miracles and
revelation must disappear; and philosophy takes its place."

Hegel's deification of thought or reason left no room for personal
immortality, and his query, "Do you expect a tip for having nursed your
ailing mother, and refrained from poisoning your brother?" is well
known. A vague conception of a deity whose existence can be proved, if
it can be proved at all, only by the abstruse arguments of a Hegel is
not a god of practical service to the theists.

Schelling was pantheistic, and Feuerbach played havoc with the
philosophic evidence for God and immortality and treated all religions
as a dream and an illusion.

Herbert Spencer, James Mill, J. S. Mill, and Huxley popularized the
agnostic standpoint. Spencer in his "First Principles" argues in this
manner: "Those who cannot conceive of a self-existent Universe, and
therefore assume a creator as the source of the Universe, take for
granted that they can conceive a self-existent creator. The mystery
which they recognize in this great fact surrounding them on every side,
they transfer to an alleged source of this great fact, and then suppose
that they have solved the mystery. But they delude themselves.
Self-existence is inconceivable; and this holds true whatever be the
nature of the object of which it is predicated. Whoever agrees that the
atheistic hypothesis is untenable because it involves the impossible
idea of self-existence, must perforce admit that the theistic hypothesis
is untenable if it contains the same impossible idea.... If religion and
science are to be reconciled, the basis of reconciliation must be this
deepest, widest, and most certain of all facts, that the Power which the
Universe manifests to us is inscrutable."

Nietzsche, the great liberator of modern thought, vigorously opposed
religious morality, the influence of Christianity, and all religious
beliefs. "When the natural consequences of an action," he wrote, "are no
longer looked upon as natural, but are considered to be produced by the
phantasms of superstition, by 'God,' 'Ghosts,' and 'Souls,' and appear
as 'moral' consequences, as rewards, punishments, guidance and
revelation, then the whole basis of knowledge is destroyed; and the
greatest possible crime against humanity has been committed."

William James, claimed as a supporter of religion, argues that ou