Is it Human Nature as opposed to Nature ?--Man as distinct from, and holier than, any individual men?
Of all the substitutes for God this at first sight seems the most promising, or, at any rate, the most practical.

But, apart from all the other objections to this, which we have already been considering in such detail, it will very soon be apparent that it involves the very same inconsistency, the same contradiction in terms.

The fact of moral evil still confronts us, and the humanity to which we lift our hearts up is still taxable with that.

But perhaps we separate the good in humanity from the evil, and only worship the former as struggling to get free from the latter.

This, however, will be of little help to us.