Having traced the dissolution of dogma and religious symbolism it is appropriate to consider the fate of that system of religious morality which rests upon dogma and upon faith. There are in religious morality some durable elements and some caducous ones which stand out in sharper and sharper opposition in the course of the progress of human society. The two stable elements of religious morality which will occupy us first are respect and love; these are the elements indeed of every system of morality, those which are in nowise related to mysticism or symbolism, and which tend progressively to part company with them. * * * * * [Sidenote: Superiority of element of love over that of respect.] I. Kant regarded respect or reverence as the moral sentiment _par excellence_; the moral law, in his opinion, was a law of reverence and not of love, and therein lay its pretensions to universality: for if it had been a law of love, there would have been a difficulty in imposing it upon all reasonable beings. I can insist on your respecting me but not on your loving me. In the sphere of society Kant is right; the law cannot provide that men shall love each other, but only that they shall respect each other’s rights. But is the same thing true in the sphere of pure morality—have not the two great “universal” religions, Buddhism and Christianity, been right in regarding love as the controlling principle in ethics? Respect is no more than the beginnings of ideal morality; in the attitude of respect the soul feels itself restricted, held in check, embarrassed. And what in effect essentially is respect, but the ability to violate a right on the one hand and on the other a right to go inviolable? Well, there is another sentiment which does away with the very possibility of violence and which therefore is even purer than respect, that is to say love, and Christianity has so understood it. Be it remarked also that respect is necessarily implied in a properly understood moral love; love is superior to respect not because it suppresses it but because it completes it. Genuine love inevitably presents itself under the form of respect, but this conception of respect, abstractly taken, is an empty form without content; and can be filled with love alone. What one respects in the dignity of another person is—is it not?—a personal power held in check, a sort of moral autonomy. It is possible to conceive a cold hard respect that is not absolutely free from some suggestion of mechanical necessity. What one loves, on the contrary, in the dignity of another person is the element in his character which beckons and welcomes one. Is it possible to conceive a cold love? Respect is a species of check, love is an outleap of emotion; respect is the act by which will meets will; in love there is no sense of opposition, of calculation, of hesitation; one gives one’s self simply and entirely. [Sidenote: The mistake of Christianity.]