But if we examine life as it actually exists about us, we shall see that this classification has been traversed by another.

Many things naturally repellent have received a supernatural blessing; many things naturally pleasant have received a supernatural curse; and thus our highest happiness is often composed of pain, and our profoundest misery is nearly always based on pleasure.
Accordingly, whereas happiness naturally would seem the test of right, right has come supernaturally to be the test of happiness.

And so completely is this notion engrained in the world's consciousness, that in all our deeper views of life, no matter whether we be saints or sinners, right and wrong are the things that first appeal to us, not happiness and misery.

A certain supernatural moral judgment, in fact, has become a primary faculty with us, and it mixes with every estimate we form of the world around us.
It is this faculty that positivism, if accepted fully, must either destroy or paralyse; it is this, therefore, that in imagination we must now try to eliminate.

To do this--to see what will be left in life to us, without this faculty, we must first see in general, how much is at present dependent on it.
This might at first sight seem a hard task to perform; the interests we shall have to deal with are so many and so various.