condition in which it survives is commonly not in the least realised.
The class of men concerned with it are like soldiers who may be fighting
more bravely perhaps than ever; but who are fighting, though none
observe it, with the death-wound under their uniforms. Of all the signs
of the times, these high-minded unbelievers are thought to be the most
reassuring; but really they are the very reverse of this. The reason why
their true condition has passed unnoticed is, that it is a condition
that is naturally silent, and that has great difficulty in finding a
mouthpiece. The only two parties who have had any interest in commenting
on it have been the very parties least able to understand, and most
certain to distort it. They have been either the professed champions of
theism, or else the visionary optimists of positivism; the former of
whom have had no sympathy with positive principles, and the latter no
discernment of their results. The class of men we are considering are
equally at variance with both of these; they agree with each in one
respect, and in another they agree with neither. They agree with the one
that religious belief is false; they agree with the other that unbelief
is miserable. What wonder then that they should have kept their
condition to themselves? Nearly all public dealing with it has been left
to men who can praise the only doctrines that they can preach as true,
or who else can condemn as false the doctrines that they deplore as
mischievous. As for the others, whose mental and moral convictions are
at variance, they have neither any heart to proclaim the one, nor any
intellectual standpoint from which to proclaim the other. Their only
impulse is to struggle and to endure in silence. Let us, however, try to
intrude upon their privacy, even though it be rudely and painfully, and
see what their real state is; for it is these men who are the true
product of the present age, its most special and distinguishing feature,
and the first-fruits of what we are told is to be the philosophy of the
enlightened future.