Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typ...os. Excerpt from book: INTRODUCTION. GENERAL THEORY OF RELIGION. CONVERSATION I. The Woman.?I have often asked myself this question, my dear father. Your doctrine rejects every form of belief in a supernatural power; why do you persist in calling it a Religion ? But on reflection the fact struck me, that the term, Religion, is, in common use, given to many systems, not merely different, but even incompatible the one with the other. Each of these systems claims exclusive possession of it; yet no one of them has at any time been able, if you take the whole race into account, to reckon up as many adherents as opponents. I was hence led to think that this fundamental term must have some one general acceptation, radically independent of every special form of faith. Once arrived at this point, I felt convinced that it was on this essential meaning of the term that you fixed, and that you were justified therefore in applying it to Positivism, in spite of the greater contrast that exists between it and the previous doctrines, whichopenly avow that their mutual points of difference are quite as serious as the points in which they agree. Still, as this explanation seems to me yet far from clear, would you begin your exposition by explaining at once and in precise language the ra- . dical sense of the word Religion ? The Priest.?Looking to the etymology of the term, my dear daughter, we find as a fact that it has no necessary connexion with any opinions whatever that may be considered useful for attaining the end it sets before us. In itself it expresses the state of perfect unity which is the distinctive mark of man's existence, both as an individual and in society, when all the constituent parts of his nature, moral as well as physical, are made habitually to converge towards one common purpose. Thus...Detailed info »« Brief info