In this exceedingly striking passage we have the whole case before us.  The belief on which modern love rests, and which makes it so single and so sacred is, as it were, drawn for us on an enlarged scale:  and we see that it is a belief to which positivism has no right.  The belief, indeed, is by no means a modern thing.  Rudiments of it on the contrary are as old as man himself, and may represent a something that inheres in his very nature.  But none the more for this will it be of any service to the positivist; for this something can only be of power or value if the prophecy it inevitably developes into be regarded as a true one.  In the consciousness of the ancient world it lay undeciphered like the dark sentence of an oracle; and though it might be revered by some, it could not be denied by any.  But its meaning is now translated for us, and there is a new factor in the case.  We now can deny it; and if we do, its whole power is paralysed.

This when once recognised must be evident enough.  But a curious confusion of thought has prevented the positive school from seeing it.  They have imagined that what religion adds to love is the hope of prolongation only, not of development also; and thus we find Professor Huxley curtly dismissing the question by saying that the quality of such a pleasure ’is obviously in no way affected by the abbreviation or prolongation of our conscious life.’  How utterly this is beside the point may be shown instantly by a very simple example.  A painter, we will say, inspired with some great conception, sets to work at a picture, and finds a week of the intensest happiness in preparing his canvas and laying his first colours.  Now the happiness of that week is, of course, a fact for him.  It would not have been greater had it lasted a whole fortnight; and it would not have been less had he died at the week’s end.  But though obviously, as Professor Huxley says, it in no way depends on its prolongation, what it does depend on is the belief that it will be prolonged, and that in being prolonged it will change its character.  It depends on the belief on the painter’s part that he will be able to continue his painting, and that as he continues it, his picture will advance to completion.  The positivists have confused the true saying that the pleasure of painting one picture does not depend on the fact that we shall paint many, with the false saying that the pleasure of beginning that one does not depend on the belief that we shall finish it.  On this last belief it is plain that the pleasure does depend, largely if not entirely; and it is precisely this last belief that positivism takes away.