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Or such works as that of Meursius, or the worst scenes in Petronius 142 The supernatural moral judgment is the chief thing everywhere 143 Take away this judgment, and art loses all its strange interest 144 And so will it be with life 145 The moral landscape will be ruined 145 Even the mere sensuous joy of living in health will grow duller 146 Nor will culture be of the least avail without the supernatural moral element 148 Nor will the devotion to truth for its own sake, which is the last refuge of the positivists when in despair 149 For this last has no meaning whatever, except as a form of concrete theism 152 The reverence for Nature is but another form of the devotion to truth, and its only possible meaning is equally theistic 157 Thus all the higher resources of positivism fail together 161 And the highest positive value of life would be something less than its present value 161

CHAPTER VII.
THE SUPERSTITION OF POSITIVISM.

From what we have just seen, the visionary character of the positivist conception of progress becomes evident	163
Its object is far more plainly an illusion than the Christian heaven	164
All the objections urged against the latter apply with far more force to the former	165
As a matter of fact, there is no possible object sufficient to start the enthusiasm required by the positivists	167
To make the required enthusiasm possible human nature would have to be completely changed	168
Two existing qualities, for instance, would have to be magnified to an impossible extent—imagination	169
And unselfishness	170
If we state the positive system in terms of common life, its visionary character becomes evident	172
The examples which have suggested its possibility are quite misleading	173
The positive system is really far more based on superstition than any religion	175
Its appearance can only be accounted for by the characters and circumstances of its originators	175
And a consideration of these will help us more than anything to estimate it rightly	178
And will let us see that its only practical tendency is to deaden all our present interests, not to create any new ones	179

CHAPTER VIII.
THE PRACTICAL PROSPECT.

It is not contended that the prospect