The absence of religion thus conceived is one with a reasoned but hypothetical metaphysics, treating of men and the universe. One may designate it as religious independence, or _anomy_, or individualism.[3] It has, moreover, been preached in some degree by all religious reformers from Sakia-Mouni and Jesus to Luther and Calvin, for they have all of them maintained liberty of conscience and respected so much only of tradition as, in the then state of contemporary religious criticism, they could not help admitting. Catholicism, for example, was founded in part by Jesus, but also in part in spite of Jesus; intolerant Anglicanism was founded in part by Luther, but also in part in spite of Luther. The non-religious man, the man simply without a religion, may therefore admire and sympathize with the great founders of religion, not only in that they were thinkers, metaphysicians, moralists, and philanthropists, but in that they were reformers of established belief, more or less avowed enemies of religious authority, of every affirmation which should be that of a sacred body and not of an individual. Every positive religion possesses as one of its essential characters that of transmitting itself from one generation to another, by virtue of the authority which attaches to domestic or national traditions; its mode of transmission is thus totally different from that of science and of art. New religions themselves are obliged more often than not to present themselves in the guise of simple reforms, in the guise of simple returns to the rigour of former teaching and precept, to avoid giving too great a shock to the principle of authority, but in spite of these disguises every new religion has shaken it; the return to an alleged primitive authority has always been a real outleap in the direction of ultimate liberty. There exists, then, in the bosom of every great religion a dissolving force; namely, the very force which served in the beginning to constitute it and to enable it to triumph over its predecessor: the right of private judgment. It is upon this force, this right, that one may count for the ultimate establishment, after the gradual decomposition of every system of dogmatic belief, of a final absence of religion.[4] [3] See pt. 3, chap. ii. [4] See pt. 3, chap. i.