conversion to free-thought, 295
CHAPTER VII.
THE EFFECT OF RELIGION AND NON-RELIGION ON POPULATION AND THE FUTURE OF THE RACE.
I. Importance of the problem of population—Antagonism between numerical strength and wealth—Necessity of numbers for the maintenance and progress of the race—Necessity of giving the advantage of numbers to the superior races—Problem of population in France—Its relation to the religious problem—Are the reasons for the restriction of the number of births physiological, moral, or economic?—Malthusianism in France—The true national peril.
II. Remedies—Is a return to religion possible?—Religious powerlessness and growing tolerance in the matter—The influence that the law might exercise upon the causes of small families—Enumeration of these causes—Reform of the law in regard to filial duty—(Support of parents)—Reform of the law of inheritance—Reform of the military law for the purpose of favouring large families and of permitting emigration to the French colonies.
III. Influence of public education: its necessity as a substitute for religious sentiment, 315
Part Third.
NON-RELIGION OF THE FUTURE.
CHAPTER I.
RELIGIOUS INDIVIDUALISM.
I. Is a renovation of religion possible? 1. Is a unification of the great religions to-day existing possible? 2. Is the appearance of a new religion to be expected?—Future miracles impossible—Religious poetry not to be expected—Men of genius capable of sincerely and naïvely labouring in the creating of a new religion not to be expected—Impossibility of adding to the original stock of religious ideas—No new cult possible—Last attempts at a new cult in America and in France—The Positivist cult—Ethical culture—Can socialism renew religion?—Advantages and defects of socialistic experiments.
II. Religious anomy and the substitution of doubt for faith—1. Will the absence of religion result in scepticism? Will the number of sceptics increase with the disappearance of religion? 2. Substitution of doubt for faith—Genuinely religious character of doubt.
III. Substitution of metaphysical hypothesis for dogma—Difference between religious sentiment and instinct for metaphysics—Imperishable character of the latter—Sentiment at once of the limits of science and of the infinity of our ideal—Spencer’s attempted reconciliation of science and religion—Confusion of religion with metaphysics, 350
CHAPTER II.
ASSOCIATION. THE PERMANENT ELEMENT OF RELIGIONS IN SOCIAL LIFE.
Social Aspect of Religions—Religious Communities and Churches—Ideal Type of Voluntary Association—Its Diverse Forms.
I. Associations for intellectual purposes—How such associations might preserve the most precious elements of religions—Societies for the advancement of science, philosophy, religion—Dangers to avoid—Popularization of scientific ideas; propagandism in the interests of science.
II. Associations for moral purposes—Tendency of religion in the best minds to become one with charity—Pity and charity will survive
