or philosophical belief in the absolute, which stifles religion and perishes in its own turn. The doctrine of immortality, based on the belief in the value of human personality, leads us away from monarchy to a republic of free spirits. A democratic religion in this sense will display human nature raised to its highest dignity by virtue of an energetic affirmation of personal liberty, tolerance, mutual respect and liberty of faith—a free religion without priests or clericalism, not in conflict with science and philosophy, but encouraging these pursuits and in turn encouraged by them.[28] [28] The fullest treatment of this is the large section in the conclusion to the _Philosophie analytique de l’Histoire_ (tome iv.). _Cf_. also the discussion of the influence of religious beliefs on societies in the last chapter of _La Nouvelle Monadologie_. III Ravaisson, in founding the new spiritual philosophy, professed certain doctrines which were a blending of Hellenism and Christianity. In the midst of thought which was dominated by positivism, naturalism or materialism, or by a shallow eclecticism, wherein religious ideas were rather held in contempt, he issued a challenge on behalf of spiritual values and ideals. Beauty, love and goodness, he declared, were divine. God himself is these things, said Ravaisson, and the divinity is “not far from any of us.” In so far as we manifest these qualities we approach the perfect personality of God himself. In the infinite, in God, will is identical with love, which itself is not distinguished from the absolutely good and the absolutely beautiful. This love can govern our wills; the love of the beautiful and the good can operate in our lives. In so far as this is so, we participate in the love and the life of God. Boutroux agrees substantially with Ravaisson, but he lays more stress upon the free creative power of the deity as immanent. “God,” he remarks in his thesis, “is not only the creator of the world, he is also its Providence, and watches over the details as well as over the whole.”[29] God is thus an immanent and creative power in his world as well as the perfect being of supreme goodness and beauty. Boutroux here finds this problem of divine immanence and transcendence as important as does Blondel, and his attitude is like that of Blondel, midway between that of Ravaisson and Bergson. [29] _La Contingence des Lois de la Nature_, p. 150.