ABSTRACT
The more advanced creed, which he hoped might eventually replace fading Christian dogma, was what he called the ‘Religion of Humanity’ (1874), a comprehensive liberal utilitarian system of belief, in which extensive liberty of the individual is conjoined with a code of general rules designed to maximize the public good or happiness. As he recalls, by the time he was about 24, he ‘looked forward, through the present age of loud disputes but generally weak convictions [surely reminiscent of our own age], to a future which shall unite the best qualities of the critical with the best qualities of the organic periods’;
unchecked liberty of thought, unbounded freedom of individual action in all modes not hurtful to others; but also, convictions as to what is right and wrong, useful and pernicious, deeply engraven on the feelings by early education and general unanimity of sentiment, and so firmly grounded in reason and in the true exigencies of life, that they shall not, like all former and present creeds, religious, ethical, and political, require to be periodically thrown off and replaced by others.
