In spite of the partial lapses from logical consistency that have been here pointed out in the theory of moral symbolism, there is one conclusion that is logically insisted on in the books just examined, and in especial Mr. Arnold’s book, namely: that the solidest support of every religion is a more or less imperfect system of morals; that the power of Christianity, as of Buddhism, has lain in its moral injunctions, and that if one suppressed this moral injunction there would nothing remain of the two great “universal” religions brought forth by human intelligence. Religion serves, so to speak, as an envelope for morality; it protects morality against the period of its ultimate development and efflorescence, but when once moral beliefs have gained strength enough they tend to protrude from this envelope, like a flower bursting out of the bud. Some years ago what was at that time called Independent Morality was much discussed; the defenders of religion maintained that the fate of morality is intimately bound up with it—that if morality were separated from religion it must decline. They were perhaps right in pointing out the intimate connection between morality and religion, but they were mistaken in maintaining that it is the former that is dependent; it would be truer to say the precise opposite, that it is religion that depends upon morality, that the latter is the principal and the former the subordinate. The Ecclesiast says somewhere, “He hath set the world in their heart.” It is for that reason that man should first look into his own heart, and should first of all believe in himself. Religious faith might more or less logically issue out of moral faith, but could not produce the moral faith, and if it should go counter to the moral faith it would condemn itself. The religious spirit cannot therefore accommodate itself to the new order of things except by abandoning, in the first place, all the dogmas of a liberal faith, and then all the symbols of a more enlightened faith and holding fast by the fundamental principle which constitutes the life of religion and dominates its historical evolution; that is to say, the moral sentiment of Protestantism in spite of all its contradictions has really introduced into the world a new principle; it is this, that conscience is its own judge, that individual initiative should be substituted for objective authority.[61] Such a principle includes as a logical consequence not only the suppression of real dogmas and of mysteries, but also that of precise and determinate symbols; of everything, in a word, which proposes to impose itself upon the conscience as a ready-made truth. Protestantism unwittingly contained in its own bosom the germ of the negation of every positive religion that does not address itself exclusively and directly to private judgment, to the moral sense of the individual. In our days no one is willing to believe simply what he is told to believe; he