The Romantic races, which ridicule this prudery and take sexual relations less seriously, find _Mary's Romance_ attractive enough; the special cult which "Our Lady" enjoys in France and Italy is often associated with this love-story with curious naïveté. Thus, for example, Paul de Regla (Dr. Desjardin), author of _Jesus of Nazareth considered from a Scientific, Historical, and Social Standpoint_ (1894), finds precisely in the illegitimate birth of Christ a special "title to the halo that irradiates his noble form." It seemed to me necessary to enter fully into this important question of the origin of Christ in the sense of impartial historical science, because the Church militant itself lays great emphasis on it, and because it regards the miraculous structure which has been founded on it as one of its strongest weapons against modern thought. The highest ethical value of pure primitive Christianity and the ennobling influence of this "religion of love" on the history of civilization are quite independent of those mythical dogmas. The so-called "revelations" on which these myths are based are incompatible with the firmest results of modern science. CHAPTER XVIII OUR MONISTIC RELIGION Monism as a Connecting Link between Religion and Science--The _Cultur-Kampf_--The Relations of Church and State--Principles of the Monistic Religion--Its Three-fold Ideal: the Good, the True, and the Beautiful--Contradiction between Scientific and Christian Truth--Harmony of the Monistic and the Christian Idea of Virtue--Opposition between Monistic and Christian Views of Art--Modern Expansion and Enrichment of Our Idea of the World--Landscape-Painting and the Modern Enjoyment of Nature--The Beauties of Nature--This World and Beyond--Monistic Churches Many distinguished scientists and philosophers of the day, who share our monistic views, consider that religion is generally played out. Their meaning is that the clear insight into the evolution of the world which the great scientific progress of the nineteenth century has afforded us will satisfy, not only the causal feeling of our reason, but even our highest emotional cravings. This view is correct in the sense that the two ideas, religion and science, would indeed blend into one if we had a perfectly clear and consecutive system of monism. However, there are but a few resolute thinkers who attain to this most pure and lofty conception of Spinoza and Goethe. Most of the educated people of our time (as distinct from the uncultured masses) remain in the conviction that religion is a separate branch of our mental life, independent of science, and not less valuable and indispensable.