Comte has written, that he has overlooked any of
the truth that there is in Mr Spencer's theory. He would not indeed have
said (what Mr Spencer apparently wishes us to say) that the effects
which can be historically traced, for example to religion, were not
produced by the belief in God, but by reverence and fear of him. He
would have said that the reverence and fear presuppose the belief: that
a God must be believed in before he can be feared or reverenced. The
whole influence of the belief in a God upon society and civilization,
depends on the powerful human sentiments which are ready to attach
themselves to the belief; and yet the sentiments are only a social force
at all, through the definite direction given to them by that or some
other intellectual conviction; nor did the sentiments spontaneously
throw up the belief in a God, since in themselves they were equally
capable of gathering round some other object. Though it is true that
men's passions and interests often dictate their opinions, or rather
decide their choice among the two or three forms of opinion, which the
existing condition of human intelligence renders possible, this
disturbing cause is confined to morals, politics, and religion; and it
is the intellectual movement in other regions than these, which is at
the root of all the great changes in human affairs.
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