morality—Mysticism—Antagonism of divine love and human love—Asceticism—Excesses of asceticism—Especially in the religions of the East—Conception of sin in the modern mind.
III. Subjective worship and prayer—The notion of prayer from the point of view of modern science and philosophy—Ecstasy—The survival of prayer, 195
CHAPTER IV.
RELIGION AND NON-RELIGION AMONG THE PEOPLE.
I. Is religious sentiment an innate and imperishable possession of humanity—Frequent confusion of a sentiment for religion with a sentiment for philosophy and morals—Renan—Max Müller—Difference between the evolution of belief in the individual and the evolution of belief in the race—Will the disappearance of faith leave a void behind?
II. Will the dissolution of religion result in a dissolution of morality among the people?—Is religion the sole safeguard of social authority and public morality?—Christianity and socialism—Relation between non-religion and immorality, according to statistics.
III. Is Protestantism a necessary transition stage between religion and free-thought?—Projects for Protestantizing France—Michelet, Quinet, De Laveleye, Renouvier, and Pillon—Intellectual, moral, and political superiority of Protestantism—Utopian character of the project—Uselessness, for purposes of morals, of substituting one religion for another—Is the possession of religion a condition sine qua non of superiority in the struggle for existence?—Objections urged against France and the French Revolution by Matthew Arnold; Greece and Judea compared, France and Protestant nations compared—Critical examination of Matthew Arnold’s theory—Cannot free-thought, science, and art evolve their respective ideals from within? 226
CHAPTER V.
RELIGION AND NON-RELIGION AND THE CHILD.
I. Decline of religious education—Defects of this education, in especial in Catholic countries—Means of lightening these defects—The priest—The possibility of state-action on the priest.
II. Education provided by the state—Primary instruction—The schoolmaster—Secondary and higher instruction—Should the history of religion be introduced into the curriculum?
III. Education at home—Should the father take no part in the religious education of his children—Evils of a preliminary religious education to be followed by disillusionment—The special question of the immortality of the soul: what should be said to children about death, 272
CHAPTER VI.
RELIGION AND NON-RELIGION AMONG WOMEN.
Are women inherently predisposed toward religion and even toward superstition?—The nature of feminine intelligence—Predominance of the imagination—Credulity—Conservatism—Feminine sensibility—Predominance of sentiment—Tendency to mysticism—Is the moral sentiment among women based upon religion—Influence of religion and of non-religion upon modesty and love—Origin of modesty—Love and perpetual virginity—M. Renan’s paradoxes on the subject of monastic vows—How woman’s natural proclivities may be turned to account by free-thought—Influence exercised by the wife’s faith over the husband—Instance of a
