y.
Out of the darkness of prehistoric ages man emerges with the marks of
his lowly origin strong upon him. He is a brute, only more intelligent
than the other brutes, a blind prey to impulses, which as often as not
lead him to destruction; a victim to endless illusions, which make his
mental existence a terror and a burden, and fill his physical life
with barren toil and battle. He attains a certain degree of physical
comfort, and develops a more or less workable theory of life, in such
favourable situations as the plains of Mesopotamia or of Egypt, and
then, for thousands and thousands of years, struggles, with varying
fortunes, attended by infinite wickedness, bloodshed, and misery, to
maintain himself at this point against the greed and the ambition of
his fellow-men. He makes a point of killing and otherwise persecuting
all those who first try to get him to move on; and when he has moved
on a step, foolishly confers post-mortem deification on his victims.
He exactly repeats the process with all who want to move a step yet
farther. And the best men of the best epochs are simply those who make
the fewest blunders and commit the fewest sins.

That one should rejoice in the good man, forgive the bad man, and pity
and help all men to the best of one's ability, is surely indisputable.
It is the glory of Judaism and of Christianity to have proclaimed this
truth, through all their aberrations. But the worship of a God who
needs forgiveness and help, and deserves pity every hour of his
existence, is no better than that of any other voluntarily selected
fetish. The Emperor Julian's project was hopeful in comparison with
the prospects of the Comtist Anthropolatry.

When the historian of religion in the twentieth century is writing
about the nineteenth, I foresee he will say something of this kind:

The most curious and instructive events in the religious history of
the preceding century are the rise and progress of two new sects
called Mormons and Positivists. To the student who has carefully
considered these remarkable phenomena nothing in the records of
religious self-delusion can appear improbable.

The Mormons arose in the midst of the great Republic, which, though
comparatively insignificant, at that time, in territory as in the
number of its citizens, was (as we know from the fragments of the
speeches of its orators which have come down to us) no less remarkable
for the native intelligence of its population than for