Are women inherently predisposed toward religion and even toward superstition?—The nature of feminine intelligence—Predominance of the imagination—Credulity—Conservatism—Feminine sensibility—Predominance of sentiment—Tendency to mysticism—Is the moral sentiment among women based upon religion—Influence of religion and of non-religion upon modesty and love—Origin of modesty—Love and perpetual virginity—M. Renan’s paradoxes on the subject of monastic vows—How woman’s natural proclivities may be turned to account by free-thought—Influence exercised by the wife’s faith over the husband—Instance of a conversion to free-thought, 295 _CHAPTER VII._ THE EFFECT OF RELIGION AND NON-RELIGION ON POPULATION AND THE FUTURE OF THE RACE. I. Importance of the problem of population—Antagonism between numerical strength and wealth—Necessity of numbers for the maintenance and progress of the race—Necessity of giving the advantage of numbers to the superior races—Problem of population in France—Its relation to the religious problem—Are the reasons for the restriction of the number of births physiological, moral, or economic?—Malthusianism in France—The true national peril. II. Remedies—Is a return to religion possible?—Religious powerlessness and growing tolerance in the matter—The influence that the law might exercise upon the causes of small families—Enumeration of these causes—Reform of the law in regard to filial duty—(Support of parents)—Reform of the law of inheritance—Reform of the military law for the purpose of favouring large families and of permitting emigration to the French colonies. III. Influence of public education: its necessity as a substitute for religious sentiment, 315 Part Third. NON-RELIGION OF THE FUTURE. _CHAPTER I._ RELIGIOUS INDIVIDUALISM. I. Is a renovation of religion possible? 1. Is a unification of the great religions to-day existing possible? 2. Is the appearance of a new religion to be expected?—Future miracles impossible—Religious poetry not to be expected—Men of genius capable of sincerely and naïvely labouring in the creating of a new religion not to be expected—Impossibility of adding to the original stock of religious ideas—No new cult possible—Last attempts at a new cult in America and in France—The Positivist cult—Ethical culture—Can socialism renew religion?—Advantages and defects of socialistic experiments. II. Religious anomy and the substitution of doubt for faith—1. Will the absence of religion result in scepticism? Will the number of sceptics increase with the disappearance of religion? 2. Substitution of doubt for faith—Genuinely religious character of doubt.