A Christian might be gladly crucified if by so doing he could turn men from vice to virtue; but a connoisseur in wine would not be crucified that his best friend might prefer dry champagne to sweet.

All the agony and the struggles, then, that the positivist saint suffers with such enthusiasm, depend alike for their value and their possibility on the object that is supposed to cause them.

And in the verses just quoted this object is indeed named several times; but it is named only incidentally and in vague terms, as if its nature and its value were self-evident, and could be left to take care of themselves; and the great thing to be dwelt upon were the means and not the end: whereas the former are really only the creatures of the latter, and can have no more honour than the latter is able to bestow upon them.
Now the only positive ends named in these verses are '_the better self_,' '_sweet purity_,' and '_smiles that have no cruelty_.' The conditions of these are _beauteous order_,' and the result of them is the '_gladness of the world_.' The rest of the language used adds nothing to our positive knowledge, but merely makes us feel the want of it.

The purest heaven, we are told, that the men of any generation can look forward to, will be the increased gladness that their right conduct will secure for a coming generation: and that gladness, when it comes, will be, as it were, the seraphic song of the blessed and holy dead.
Thus every present, for the positivist, is the future life of the past; earth is heaven perpetually realising itself; it is, as it were, an eternal choir-practice, in which the performers, though a little out of tune at present, are becoming momently more and more perfect.

If this be so, there is a heaven of some sort about us at this moment.