There are many signs of a struggle, every day increasing in violence, against the dogmatic principles of the various Churches, without which, in practice, religious belief is inconceivable in this world of humanity. The general mass of a nation do not consist of philo¬ sophers ; faith for them is very largely the sole basis for a moral view of life. The various attempts to find substitutes have not proved so suitable or successful as to be obviously a good exchange for the former religious confessions. If religious doctrine and faith really get a grip on the mass of the people, the absolute authority of that faith is then the whole basis of its efficacy.
What then ordinary custom is for the general life—and without it thousands of men of superior culture would, no doubt, live reasonably and successfully, but millions of others would not—the Law is for the State, and dogma is for ordinary religion. It, and it alone, can defeat the unsteady, perpetually controverted, MY STRUGGLE 1*5 intellectual conception and mould it into a form, without which faith could never exist. In the other event the conception of a metaphysical view of life—in other words, philosophic opinion—could never have grown out of it. The attack upon dogma is in itself, therefore, very like the struggle against the general legal principles of the State, and just as the latter would end in com¬ plete State anarchy, the former would end in hopeless religious nihilism.
A politician, however, must estimate the value of a religion, not so much in connection with the faults inherent in it, but in relation to the advantages of a substitute which may be manifestly better. But until some such substitute appears, only fools and criminals will destroy what is there on the spot.