This, says he, is a better religion than any belief respecting
the unseen powers. "If individual life is short, the life of the human
species is not." How does he know this? The dark demon of Nature he
has so vividly described may sweep away the puny race to-morrow by
some fell cataclysm; and it would be a blessing if she did in his
view. "If such an object," he continues, "appears small to a mind
accustomed to dream of infinite and eternal beatitudes, it will expand
into far other dimensions when these _baseless fancies_ shall have
receded into the past." But if we must feed our moral natures on
"baseless fancies," most men will prefer the Christian dogmas of
immortality, the infinite capacity of development of the human soul,
the brotherhood of the race and its vital union with its Creator, and
its perfectibility of human institutions and social conditions in this
life under the leavening influence of Christian principle, although
Mr. Mill may stigmatize them as grandiose and enervating dreams, to
his beggarly improved substitute, which appeals neither to our common
sense nor to our moral intuitions.
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