One of the colours of life—­religion, that is—­a colour which, by their own admission, has been hitherto an important one, they have swept clean away.  They have swept it clean away, and let them remember why they have done so.  It may be a pleasing colour, or it may not:  that is a matter of taste.  But the reason why it is to be got rid of is that it is not a fast colour.  It is found to fade instantly in the spreading sunlight of knowledge.  It is rapidly getting dim and dull and dead.  When once it is gone, we shall never be able to restore it, and our future pictures of life must be tinted without its aid.  They therefore profess loudly that they will employ it no longer.

But there is this point, this all-important point, that quite escapes them.  They sweep the colour, in its pure state, clean off the palette; and then profess to show us by experiment that they can get on perfectly well without it.  But they never seem to suspect that it may be mixed up with the colours they retain, and be the secret of their depth and lustre.  Let them see whether religion be not lurking there, as a subtle colouring principle in all their pigments, even a grain of it producing effects that else were quite impossible.  Let them only begin this analysis, and it will very soon be clear to them that to cleanse life of religion is not so simple a process as they seem to fancy it.  Its actual dogmas may be readily put away from us; not so the effect which these dogmas have worked during the course of centuries.  In disguised forms they are around us everywhere; they confront us in every human interest, in every human pleasure.  They have beaten themselves into life; they have eaten their way into it.  Like a secret sap they have flavoured every fruit in the garden.  They are like a powerful drug, a stimulant, that has been injected into our whole system.

If then we could appraise the vigour and value of life independent of religion, we can draw no direct conclusions from observing it in its present state.  Before such observations can teach us anything, there is a great deal that will have to be made allowance for:  and the positive school, when they reason from life as it is, are building therefore on an utterly unsound foundation.  It is emphatically untrue to say that a single example in the present day, or for matter of that any number of examples, either goes or can go any way towards proving the adequacy of any non-religious formula.  For all such formulae have first to be further analysed before we know how far they are really non-religious; and secondly the religious element that will be certainly found existing in them will have, hypothetically, to be removed.

It would be well if the positive school would spend in this spiritual analysis but a little of that skill they have attained to in their analysis of matter.  In their experiments, for instance, on spontaneous generation, what untold pains have been taken!  With what laborious thought, with what emulous ingenuity, have they struggled to completely sterilise the fluids in which they are to seek for the new production of life!  How jealously do they guard against leaving there any already existing germs!  How easily do they tell us their experiments may be vitiated by the smallest oversight!