* * * * * All that is, is a prophecy of what will be; hence, to a philosopher, the chief interest in things is their symbolical value. * * * * * _Vivre caché, c’est vivre heureux._ This was Descartes’ motto. It should be translated: “To be able to retire with pleasure to your own thoughts, is to be happy.” * * * * * What is the pleasure of being famous? That of being talked of by those you do not know, who do not know you, and in whom you take no interest. VI. _The Satisfaction of the Religious Sentiment._ After all, the only standard of value which we need apply to anything is the amount and quality of Happiness it yields. This alone can concern Man anywhere and at any time. His religions should be measured by no other mete-yard. All were created by man, for the happiness of man; though all claim another, a superhuman, origin, and pretend to bear the sign-manual of the Divine. They are right, and what seems a paradox is a sober fact. As much the productions of human hands and brains as are the robes and paintings in which they are bedecked, they have something in them which no externals can represent, and which lifts them above their material drapery. Human beyond all else that man has devised, for that very reason they are superhuman. The strange law of Evolution is, that nothing in nature reaches its perfection but by becoming something else. The species in attaining its utmost development is transformed into another species. Man would not be the noblest product of the earth did he not feel himself too noble for it; did not the presage and aura of a higher destiny forever float around his thoughts, making themselves felt at the moments of the utmost tension of his faculties; as when behind the parapet of Chillon one rises on extreme tip-toe, and catches a glimpse of the glittering lake and massive Alps beyond. The vital principle, the motive power, which has created and maintained all religions is the Ideal of Humanity. Each age has had its own, each individual has his own, no two the same. Creeds and churches do but formulate and endeavor to materialize the average conceptions of a period or a class; but their labor is vain. Rejecting the old, putting on the new, the race marches forward to loftier ideals, the milestones of its progress being the wrecks of temples and the ruins of churches. Religions rise and fall and disappear; but Religion grows forever, because it is the inseparable associate, aye, the very expression, of that mysterious impulse on which man’s future development depends, and which makes him part and parcel of the infinite Energy in which he lives and moves and has his being.