In this chapter we have traced the attempt to reconcile _science et conscience_, after the way had been opened up by the maintenance of freedom. It was recognised that reason is not entirely pure speculation: it is also practical. Human nature seeks for goodness as well as for truth. It is noticeable that while the insistence upon the primacy of the practical reason developed, on the one hand, into a philosophy of action (anti-intellectual action in its extreme development as shown in Syndicalism), the same tendency, operating in a different manner and upon different data, essayed to find in action, and in the belief which arises from action, that Absolute or Ideal to which the pure reason feels it cannot alone attain—namely, the realisation of God. To this problem of religion we devote our next chapter. CHAPTER VII RELIGION INTRODUCTION: The religious situation in France in the nineteenth century—The intellectual and political forces against the Roman Catholic Church—Its claims, its orthodoxy and tyranny—The humanitarians—The power of Rome—Church and State—The educational problem—Clericalism—The cult of Jeanne d’Arc—The lack of a _via media_ between Roman orthodoxy and _libre pensée_—Protestantism negligible. I. Comte’s effort in his “Religion of Humanity”—Renan and the Church—Freedom—Denial of supernatural elements in Christianity—_Vie de Jésus_—Renan not irreligious—Piety—Love and Goodness reveal the Divine—God the “ideal”—Vacherot and Taine. II. Renouvier’s efforts, with Pillon, in the _Critique philosophique_ and _Critique religieuse_—His republican theology—Freedom, personality and God—The deity as finite—God as Goodness and as a Person. III. Ravaisson’s blend of Hellenism and Christian thought—Boutroux—Fouillée on the Idea of God—The importance of Guyau’s _L’Irreligion de l’Avenir_—The decay of dogma and ecclesiasticism—The term “irreligion” misleading—Sociology and religion-Freedom—Religious education and tolerance—Modernism and the Church—Loisy and others—Symbolism and _Fidéisme_. CONCLUSION: The personal factor in faith—Freedom vital to religion—Change of attitude since the eighteenth century—Value of religion—Tendency towards a free religion devoid of dogmas, expressive of the best aspirations of man’s mind. CHAPTER VII RELIGION It is outside our purpose to embark upon discussions of the religious problem in France, in so far as this became a problem of politics. Our intention is rather to examine the inner core of religious thought, the philosophy of religion, which forms an appropriate final chapter to our history of the development of ideas.