As we can see in numerous literary expressions of it 126
Positivism, by destroying these anticipations, changes the whole character of the love in question 128
And prevents love from supplying us with any moral standard 131
The loss sustained by love will indicate the general loss sustained by life 131
We must now examine what will be the practical result on life in general of the loss just indicated 132
To do this, we will take life as reflected in the mirror of the great dramatic art of the world 134
And this will show us how the moral judgment is the chief faculty to which all that is great or intense in this art appeals 136
We shall see this, for instance, in _Macbeth_ 137
In _Measure for Measure_, and in _Faust_ 138
And also in degraded art just as well as in sublime art 139
In profligate and cynical art, such as Congreve's 140
Or such works as that of Meursius, or the worst scenes in Petronius 142
The supernatural moral judgment is the chief thing everywhere 143
Take away this judgment, and art loses all its strange interest 144
Even the mere sensuous joy of living in health will grow duller 146
Nor will culture be of the least avail without the supernatural moral element 148
Nor will the devotion to truth for its own sake, which is the last refuge of the positivists when in despair 149
For this last has no meaning whatever, except as a form of concrete theism 152
The reverence for Nature is but another form of the devotion to truth, and its only possible meaning is equally theistic 157
Thus all the higher resources of positivism fail together 161
And the highest positive value of life would be something less than its present value 161
From what we have just seen, the visionary character of the positivist conception of progress becomes evident 163
Its object is far more plainly an illusion than the Christian heaven 164
_All_ the objections urged against the latter apply with far more force to the former 165
As a matter of fact, there is no possible object sufficient to start the enthusiasm required by the positivists 167
To make the required enthusiasm possible human nature would have to be completely changed 168
Two existing qualities, for instance, would have to be magnified to an impossible extent--imagination 169