Taking his own criterion, utility,
as the test of truth, his religion of humanity fails to establish
itself, for it postpones the happiness of each existing generation to
the fancied good of future generations which may never be born, and
this _ad infinitum_. On this part of his subject Mr. Mill is simply
fatuous, as when he speaks of our being sustained in this faith by the
approbation of the dead whom we venerate. But if Socrates and Howard
and Washington and Christ and Antoninus and Mrs. Mill are turned to
clay, as he says they probably are, it is nonsense to assert that he
is strengthened in the path of duty by a feeling that they would
sympathize with him if alive. It is the unconfessed hope of their
immortality that quickens him, if he is affected at all. Mr. Mill's
idolatry of his wife, like Buckle's love for his mother, was an
argument for the immortality of the soul which he does not seem to
have been able entirely to reject.
Mr. Mill never tires of calling Christianity a selfish religion, and
glorifies his substitute as free from this defect. But Mr. Fitzjames
Stephen, in his work entitled _Liberty, Equality, Fraternity_, has
clearly pointed out that Mr.
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