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"AUGUSTE COMTE'S
RELIGION OF HUMANITY."
A DISCOURSE
DELIVERED AT
SOUTH PLACE CHAPEL,
SUNDAY, 31 OCTOBER, 1880,
BY
ALEXANDER J. ELLIS,
B.A., F.R.S., F.S.A., F.C.P.S., F.C.P.,
President {for the second time) of the Philological Society.
WITH AN APPENDIX OF NOTES,
Containingjustificatory citations from Comte's works, andfrom two
unpublished private letters of Comte to the Author,
with other matter.
LONDON :
SOUTH PLACE CHAPEL (LIBRARY),
AND
TRUBNER & CO., Ludgate Hill.
1880.
PRICE 4d.
�AUGUSTE COMTE’S RELIGION
OF HUMANITY.
Last May Mr. Conway delivered a discourse in
this chapel on the question “What is the Religion of
Humanity ? ” This discourse has been printed, and
is doubtless well known to all whom I address. He
commenced by saying that this phrase “has been
much and vaguely used,” and added that it came, he
believed, “from the mint of positivism.” (Note 27,
p. 66). But there is not one word in the whole of his
discourse which indicates either the sense in which
Auguste Comte, the founder of positivism, understood
the term Humanity, or in what manner he founded a
religion upon that conception. It occurred to me
therefore, when I was asked to supply the service on
one of the Sundays during Mr. Conway’s absence, that
I should be meeting the wishes of many members of
the congregation by giving an account of Comte’s
views, with which I have been acquainted almost ever
since they were first published.
The only short systematic account which Comte
�5
in French or English, may be procured of or through
Messrs. Reeves & Turner, 196, Strand.
Isidore Auguste Marie Francois Xavier Comte, who
subsequently retained only the name of Auguste
Comte,was born on 19 January, 1798? at Montpellier, in
the department of Herault, France. He was the son of
Auguste Louis Comte, cashier of the general receiver
ship of Herault, and Felicite-Rosalie Boyer, his wife.
He was at the College of Montpellier till he went to
the Ecole Polytechnique in 1814, but the whole of
that school was dismissed for what was considered an
act of insubordination (a protest against a repetiteur,
or assistant lecturer, signed first by Comte), and he
became a teacher of mathematics for bread. From
1818 to 1820, he was in friendly relations with the
celebrated Claude Henri, Comte de Saint Simon (born
1760, died 1825), whose pupil Comte styled himself
at the time, though he did not learn positivism from
him, and subsequently considered these relations most
unfavourable for the development of his conceptions.
It was in May, 1822, that, attached to a little privately
distributed pamphlet by Saint Simon, called du Contra!
Social, of which 100 copies were printed, Comte added
what he termed “ a plan of the scientific works required
for the reorganisation of society,” reprinted in an
edition of 1,000 copies in 1824, and then entitled
“ System of Positive Polity.” This wonderful work
of a young man of twenty-four, well justified its
�English translation much condensed, but approved by
Comte, was made by Miss Harriett Martineau.
During the execution of this great work, he had to
maintain himself by continuous labour as a teacher of
mathematics, in which capacity I first heard of him as
private tutor to a former Eton boy of my acquaintance
at Paris in 1834, and I then became possessed of the
first volumes of his Positive Philosophy. It was with
the greatest difficulty that Comte managed to scrape
together during this period some 10,000 francs or
^400 a year. He used to compose the whole of one
of his volumes on Positive Philosophy, in all its details,
in his head without even making a note, and then,
when he had leisure to write, he sat down and wrote
it off, never correcting, and keeping only a few sheets
in advance of the press. In 1842 Comte was separated
from his wife, with whom, however, he long maintained
an intimate correspondence. In 1844, Comte, who
had long held two subordinate offices in the Ecole
Polytechnique, lost them both through a series of mis
fortunes which I cannot even advert to. Three Eng
lishmen, Grote, Molesworth and Raikes Currie
gave him temporary assistance. In 1849 his friends
raised an annual subscription for him, the collection of
which he took into his own hands when the rupture
occurred between him and M. Littre, who had ori
ginated it, a rupture due to the different views which they
took of Napoleon III.’s coup d'etat. This subscription
�complete his Positive Polity in 1854, and then began
what he intended to be the complement of his
labours, the Positive Synthesis, of which only the first
volume appeared in 1856, containing Positive Logic,
which is in fact a history and criticism of the whole of
Mathematics as then known—much has been added
since that time. Two of the remaining volumes of
the Synthesis were destined to give an exposition of
Positive Morality, of which one was to be on theo
retical, and the other on practical morals. Of these,
nothing but the titles of the chapters is preserved.
■(Note 2, p. 47.) Of the fourth volume all we know is,
.that it was to be a system of Positive Industry. After
a painful illness, on the nature of which a difference
of opinion prevails, Comte died on Saturday, 5 Sep
tember, 1857. Since then his rooms at No. 10, Rue
Monsieur-le-Prince, Paris, have been kept exactly as
he left them, and the Positivist Society of Paris, under
the direction of M. Laffitte, appointed principal
-executor under Comte’s will, there holds its meetings,
and performs the rites of the Religion of Humanity.
The subsequent career of Positivism is detailed in a
periodical appearing every two months, called La
Revue Occidentale. For an English appreciation of
Comte’s two works, I must refer you to two articles
by John Stuart Mill, reprinted from the “Westminster
Review,” entitled Auguste Comte and Positivism
JTriibner, 1865). For French appreciations, reference
�II
materially alter their views most probably, if admitted,
but they are as much without it, as Christianity dispenses with the Olympic mythology of the Greeks.
No Christian would now attempt to give an elaborate
is proof of the non-existence of the Greek and Roman
Gods. He does not want them or care for them.
(Note 4, p. 49.) And so the positivist does not want or
care for the God of any description of Theists. But he
is not like the old Christians, iconoclastic.. He recog
u nises all religions, past and present, with sedulous
catholicity, and considers them all as transitional
forms heralding in his own, or rather his Master’s
The God of the Theist may or
U universal conception.
may not be demonstrable, but at any rate has not
The Supreme Being of the
3,t ' been demonstrated.
& . positivists, which is as far as possible from being a
rg God, is not only demonstrable, but demonstrated ; is
not only possible, but actual ■ is not a mere subjective
conception, but a real objective existence, and would
O so remain and be equally well fitted to command the
•a reverence and govern the actions of men, even if there
were a theistic God behind it. Such is the positivist
view.
This Supreme Being is called Humanity, by which
■s is not meant the bare abstraction of human nature, or
It is an
ifi organic as opposed to inorganic nature.
3| actual objective being, neither personal nor impersonal,
but rather com-personal; of a duration, relatively to a
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of actual co-operation in maintaining the common
existence. ^1 am using Comte’s own words as far as
possible.) Although every man is by birth a child of
Humanity, every man is not fit to be one of her
servants (for Comte speaks of Humanity in the femi
nine, not merely from the accidental gender of the
French noun, but for other reasons which I shall not
have time to adduce). Many remain in a parasitic
condition, tolerable only during education. Anarchi
cal times, Comte adds, have made such sad burdens
on Humanity to abound, and too often to flourish.
And he quotes of them Dante’s lines referring to—
Those that have lived without or praise or blame—,
Speak not of them, but look and go thy way.
(Che visser senza infamia e senza lode—
Non ragionam di lor, ma guarda e passa.)
But while these vegetables must be rejected from
Humanity, Comte would include among her parts
those worthy animals which contribute voluntarily to
her existence. £c Many horses, dogs and cattle are
worthier than some men,” says he. (Note 5, p. 50.)
Now in regarding this compound being, we naturally
look first rather to the inter-connection of existing
men, than to the past and future. But the present
forms in fact a very small part of this being. Con
tinuity is very much more important; society at any
time depends very much more on the knowledge,
feelings and arrangements which have been handed
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“ God doth not need
Either man’s work, or his own gifts.”
But Humanity is powerless without the action of living
men. Hence it becomes the business of each living cell of
the great organism of Humanity to act consciously as its
servant and coadjutor, using the liberal gifts which it has
received from the past and passing them on increased,
less and less as the receipts are more and more, but
never diminished, to the future. By this means each in
dividual has it within his power to become incorporated
in the great compersonal Being whom he worthily serves.
This conception, which I have imperfectly sketched,
has to become familiar before it becomes efficacious.
We must continually feel that we are an existing part
of Humanity, actuated by our dead predecessors and
working for our unborn followers. We must feel that
those whotrust totheirown action without the assistance
of the.dead are at best self-deceived, for every thought,
every action, every premiss is in the first place in
herited. If a great flood were to pass over the world,
as was once imagined, and destroy all man’s work,
but to leave man, and the mental inheritance of the
race were thus to remain, the result of the teachings
so preserved, would be that the work of restoration
would proceed infinitely more rapidly than the original
work of constitution. Again, the man who imagines
that he works for himself alone, because he looks to
his own gratification only as an end, is as much self-
�.
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of vessels at sea, and so forth. Granted, they assert,
that at some future time it may be possible to render
probable or certain that there is an intelligent power
beyond Humanity, yet even then our first duties, our
only really sensible and executable duties, will be
towards this especial tellurian providence, Humanity.
This, as I gather, is the real position of Comte’s fol
lowers towards modern theists. But of course there is a
difference between the reign of law and the reign of
special arbitrary supramundane providence, between
the acknowledgment of Humanity as the highest con
ceivable being, and the acceptance of a mystic un
defined personality, quite independent of Humanity,
in direct communion with each individual man. The
positivists say in the old words “ the non-apparent
must be regarded as non-existent ” (de non apparentibus et de non existentibus eadem est lex). The
theists rejoin that to them this higher being is ap
parent and hence existent, and that this even inter
feres with the possible acceptance of Humanity as
a secondary providence. This conclusion is, however,
shown by acts performed to be rather theoretical
than practical. As long as people revert to the
records of the wisdom of their ancestors (and all
bodies of laws and codes of religion belong to this
category, as well as all records of science), instead of
relying upon individual inspiration, whether as the
result of prayer or merely spontaneous, and as long
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is crete, can be satisfactorily traced or indeed traced at
El all. He established, then, as the foundation of his
research, a progressive scale of the sciences, or
ni hierarchy, as he terms it, beginning with the most
ril simple and hence most generally applicable, and ending
hi with the most complex and hence most limited in its
■J area. Comte was professionally a mathematician, as
II have already mentioned, and he begins his scale of
ill the sciences with mathematics or the science of numijj ber and space, as the very simplest and most universal
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of conceptions. How he finds in their treatment the
bases of all methods of reasoning, inductive as well
as deductive, I must refer you to his books to learn,
and especially to his treatise on algebraical geometry
(“ Traite elementaire de Geometrie analytique a deux
et a trois dimensions, contenant toutes les theories
generates de Geometrie accessibles a l’analyse ordin
aire,” 1843), which is indeed quite unfitted for an
examination cram book, but is full of contrivances for
leading to the discovery of general principles of
reasoning. To these he joined abstract mechanics,
or the science of motion and rest. In these three
branches, number, space, and motion, which have
been entirely neglected in most philosophies, he finds
the foundation of his own. He finds first the absolute
unconditionality and invariability of primary relations,
that uniformity of nature on which all our knowledge
�the real basis of induction, which is not sufficiently
brought out in its comparatively embryonic condition
in pure mathematics. How carefully he considered
the astronomy of observatories in this light must be
studied in his popular astronomy (“ Traite philosophique d’Astronomie populaire ou Exposition systematique de toutes les notions de philosophie astronomique, soit scientifiques, soit logiques, qui doivent
devenir universellement familieres,” 1844), containing
the systematic exposition of many courses of lectures
delivered by him, for which he had a great predilec
tion. As a step in religion, in all schemes of religion,
astronomic observation, aided by mathematics, has
played a very great part. The modern names of
Copernicus, Kepler and Galileo are sufficient to shew
this. But for philosophy the great merit of observa
tional astronomy was the discovery of uniformity in
the midst of variety; the reduction, for example, of
the strangely meandering, advancing and retrograding,
apparent paths of the planets among the fixed stars,
which earned them the Greek name of planets, that
is, wanderers, into the single system of revolution
about a central sun, one of the greatest intellectual
' efforts of Humanity, by which all its subsequent pro
gress has been in great measure conditioned. Comte,
however, also proceeds to mechanical astronomy, in
which for the first time a universal law, gravitation,
applying to every particle of matter tellurian or extra
�works. They investigate what are often called the
general properties of matter, because they belong to
all classes or numerous classes of matter, and not
only to particular bodies. Comte died before the
great theory of the conservation of energy had been
worked out, shewing, in fact, that all these general
laws were transmutable, and hence could only be
considered as parts of one great whole.
The next science, chemistry, deals (not with general
properties of all bodies, but) with particular properties
of individual bodies, and was, in Comte’s time, and
hence in his philosophy, divided into two great
branches, inorganic and organic, which recent re
search has tended to fuse, although the distinction is in
so far real, that inorganic chemistry treats of the
properties of many substances which are not known
to form part of living beings, and organic chemistry
of some of those only which are known to do so, and
principally of carbon and its compounds. The whole
conception of the science of chemistry has been so
entirely remodelled of very late years indeed, that it
is needless to give Comte’s conclusions, more especially
as he was not a chemist, but only a philosophical
student. The great point of chemistry, however, was,
that itself embracing all the other sciences named, it
bridged the gulf between inanimate and animate
nature, and by its numerous facts, and few general
laws (as that of definite proportions, now much more
�25
■drew his celebrated distinction between the statical
nature of society forming its order, and its dynamical
nature forming its progress. The latter he developes by
means of the historical method of logic, which, if he
■ did not invent, he at least carried out for the first time
on the widest scale. The following are the three laws
which he here endeavours to establish, by an historical
•survey of the world and especially of what he terms
the Western Republic, or the five principal European
powers, France, Italy, Spain, Germany and England,
with their Colonies, which he considers to have had
common interests and responsibilities since the days
of Charlemagne, (Note io, p. 52.)
“Each intellect passes through three states, fictitious,
abstract and positive (or theological, metaphysical and
positive, as he elsewhere calls them) as respects all
conceptions whatever, with a velocity depending on
.-the generality of the corresponding phenomena.
“ There is a similar progression for action, which is at
.first conquering, then defensive, and finally industrial.
“ Society follows a similar course, and is at first
•domestic, then civic, and finally universal.” (Note 11,
P- 52).
It need not be said that these laws have been widely
disputed and constantly limited, and that perhaps the
greatest follower in the path traced out by Comte, but
by no means a follower of his theories, Mr, Herbert
.Spencer, views the matter in a materially different
�■
I
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,
recur at the proper seasons, the calendar was altered
by Julius Caesar, b.c. 45, and subsequently by Augustus,
a.d. 1. This alteration not proving ecclesiastically
sufficient for Christians, the calendar was again altered
by Pope Gregory XIII., in a.d. 1582, and this alter
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ation was adopted in England in 1752.
The French revolutionary calendar designedly
broke with every ecclesiastical association, beginning
the year with midnight of the day preceding the true
autumnal equinox, arranging the months in thirty days,
adding five or six supplementary days every year and
doing away with the week altogether. The Romans
reckoned from the building of Rome, a mythical era
the Christians from the supposed birth of Christ, an
equally mythical date ; the French revolutionists from,
in our reckoning, 22 September 1792, the day on
which Louis XVI. was deposed and the Republic
proclaimed, which was certainly a real era.
Comte in altering the calendar determined to make
it a record of the history of Humanity up to his time,
intending that it should be further changed after his
• form of religion had been established.
This he
;
sanguinely estimated would happen within fifty years,
j r He reckoned years from 1 January 1789, on the 14
i
July of which year the Bastille was destroyed (recently
proclaimed as the national fete day of France). The
present year 1880 is therefore 92 of Comte s era. But
this is a temporary era. The final and conclusive era is
�29
and the dogma thoroughly accepted and acted up
to. It was certainly a magnificent conception in the
true spirit of priesthood, and it has been wonderfully
well carried out in the spirit of a French philosopher
anxious to do justice to all whom he calls the types
and servants of Humanity, but at the same time as a
positivist inexorably blind to the merits of those whose
work he considered as purely negative, such as the
promoters of protestantism. I will rapidly explain the
basis of this great elaboration, recommending every
one who has an interest in the history of his race to
study the translation in Dr. Congreve’s Catechism.
' The first five months are dedicated to pre-Christian
times, the next two to the middle ages, and the last
six to the modern preparation. I give the names of
the persons from whom the months were named, with
Comte’s own reference to their representative charac
ter, forming the thirteen principal types of Humanity,
and after each name, I give those of the four worthies
to whom the seventh days in each week were respec
tively dedicated, forming the 52 secondary types.
The week days, containing nearly 500 names, I pass
over, from the mere pressure of time. You will
recognise many of the names recently inscribed on
the walls of this chapel.
Antiquity.
Five Months.
1. Moses (d. 1461 ?), or initial theocracy, with
�7. Charlemagne (d. 814), or feudal civilisation,
with Alfred the Great (d. 900), Godfrey of
Bouillon (d. 1100), Pope Innocent III. (d.
1216), and St. Louis (or Louis IX. of France,
d. 1270).
The Modern Preparation.
Six Months.
8. Dante (d. 1321), or modern epics, with
Ariosto (d. 1533), Raphael (Sanzio, d. 1520),
Tasso (Torquato, d. 1595), and Milton (d.
1674).
9. Gutenberg (d. about 1468), or modern
industry, with Columbus (d. 1506), Vaucanson
(d. 1782), Watt (James, d. 1781), and Mont
golfier (d. 1810). I may mention that the day
of Comte’s death, now observed by Positivists
in Paris with great solemnity, including a
meeting in Comte’s apartments and a pilgrim
age to Pere la Chaise, where he is buried, was
the Positivist Wednesday 24, Gutenberg 69,
on the day Comte had dedicated to Duhamel
du Monceau, a French botanist, agriculturist,
and physicist (who died in 1782), and in theweek
he had placed under the protection of Mont
golfier, the French papermaker, who made the
first balloon ascent in 1783, and died in 18io.
The other days in this week are dedicated—
�.■
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13. Bichat (d. 1802), or modern science, with
Galileo (d. 1642), Newton (d. 1727), Lavoisier
(d. 1794), and Gall (d. 1828).
Such was Comte’s “Humanity of the Western
Republic,” the captains of the mighty roll of the
dead, by whose help the living live. But the rank
and file of this great and increasing army are not only
partly celebrated by their sub-officers on the week
days, but the supplementary day is given up as the
universal festival of the dead, and the additional leapyear day (at first intended as a day of solemn repro
bation of the two principal retrogressionists, in Comte’s
1 opinion, the Emperor Julian, called the apostate, and
the French Emperor Napoleon I., with whom was at
one time associated Phillip II. of Spain, see Note
14, p. 53.) was finally dedicated (in the concrete as
in the abstract cult) to the festival of the Holy Women,
the two thus fitly leading on to the principal positivist
celebration, the Festival of Humanity on New Year’s
Day. (Note 15, p. 53.)
There can be no question, but that if such a cult as
is implied by this calendar, could be actually carried
out in practice, positivism would soon become a great
religion. And in view of the yearly increase in the
number of the great dead, who would be entitled to
celebration, Comte proposed hereafter to replace this
“ concrete cult ” as he termed it, by an “ abstract cult”
calling to mind all the principal social relations, both
�35
is used by French writers, and especially by
Comte, as synonymous with the so-called
labouring or working classes, or receivers of
wages.)
13. Industry, or practical power.
These four last relations are the basis of Comte’s
scheme of the society of the future. Taking as his
ground work that there are three classes of mental
action, emotional, contemplative and practical, he
divided the human family into three parts, women,
priests, and practicians, the last part being again di
vided into the proletary or governed and the patriciate
or governors. He laid down the rule that no priest
.should govern, and he has to my mind, illustrated the
wisdom of that maxim, by his own attempts as a
priest to govern the whole future of society. (See
Note 20, p. 5 7.) The women were not to engage in any
pursuit that was paid, they were to be home angels,
and to be supported by the males of their family, and
in default of the same by the state. Nothing could
■exceed Comte’s devotion to women in this respect,
nothing could have more exasperated him than the
present attempt to give women an independant social
position, and to make them competitors with men in
practical, and even contemplative life, instead of sub
siding into being man’s “guardian angels.” This was
his own term for them, and he gave it a very peculiar
significance. The cult of Humanity was to be public
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her husband nursed him in his last illness. She now
sleeps with him and Madame de Vaux, in Pbre la
Chaise. In the dedication and final invocation to his
positive polity, Comte has left a record of the nature
of his prayers to Mdme. de Vaux, and M. Lonchampt
in an essay on prayer, has given specimens of prayer
for each day of the week. (Note 18, p. 56.) But it
would be too long to quote from them, as there is still
much to say.
Women were thus sentimentally at the head of the
world, the substratum consisted of the practical
workers and governors of the future republics, into
which the great western republic was to be hereafter
sub-divided. But these republics were to be absolutely
despotic oligarchies, or rather triumvirates, each go
verning body being appointed by its predecessor, and
none, under any circumstances, by the ignorant masses
who had to be governed.
Anything approaching to
-constitutionalism or parliamentary government was
rejected as simply nonsensical, as almost a contradiction in terms. The governors at any time must be men
-of experience, chosen by their predecessors, the
triumvirate being bankers especially, though how they
could both bank and govern, even when France was
divided into seventeen states, might be difficult to determine. (Note 1:9,p.57.) But between these emotional
and practical classes, was inserted the contemplative
class of priests. These had to think for the whole
�39
tination; 5. Marriage; 6. Maturity; 7. Retirement;
8. Transformation; and 9. Incorporation. They deal
with each individual man and woman, and every period
of life and death, and even after death, and all in
reference to the great doctrine of Humanity. 1. Pre
sentation, replaces baptism, and has its two sponsors,
and is accompanied by giving the child two names,
one theoretical and the other practical, which he com
pletes, after emancipation from wardship, by adding a
third of his own selection. 2. Initiation, replacing
confirmation, takes place at fourteen, when the child
passes from the education of the mother to that of the
priest, who directs all schools.
It is during this
period that he undergoes his special apprenticeship. At
twenty-one he is, 3. “admitted ” as a servant of Human
ity, decides on his profession, and receives the
sacrament of, 4. Destination, analogous to the present
ordination of priests. This sacrament is made renew
able, allowing of a change of profession. Then fol
lows 5. Marriage, at twenty-eight years of age and not
before, for a man. In the case of women, 3. Admission
and 4. Destination coincide, because the destination
of a woman is to marry, and her marriage takes place at
twenty-one. This .marriage is indissoluble even by
death, unless one of the contracting parties has com
mitted a crime involving deprivation of civil rights, as
was the case with the husband of Mdme. de Vaux.
Either surviving contracting party is in any other case
�unworthiness, “ the fatal burden is transported to the
desert of the reprobates, to lie with the executed, the
suicide and the duellist.”
The women, who seem to
be excluded from incorporation, are to be individually
included in that of the man with whom they are con
nected.
“ Around and sometimes,” says Comte,
“within each sacred tomb, the priest will have to unite
in the name of the Supreme Being, all the personali
ties which worthily contributed to the services which
Humanity rewards.”
I am obliged to pass over much which is beautiful
to believers in any creed, in the conceptions of the
moral action of man towards his fellows as a servant
of Humanity. But I must find time even now for
some of Comte’s great mottos, in which he endeavours
to condense his whole system of thought and life—a
system which certainly does not need all the wonder
ful amount of regulation that Comte, as high priest of
Humanity, thought out and formulated in his latter days,
of which what I have told you is but a meagre and
most incomplete outline. I must give them first in
French, for they cannot be properly Englished. The
first is intellectual and defines the object of knowledge :
Savoir ‘ ouf pr'euoir afin de pourvoir, “ know to fore
p
know, to be forearmed.” That is, make your know
ledge a means of foreseeing what will happen in order
that you may be prepared against contingencies, so
that /revision may lead to /revision.
Any know-
�must remain, and the world will be different from'
what it was by the mere fact of their enunciation.
Comte was a very great thinker, and he has set his
mark on mankind. His followers in England are all
men of intellect, mostly men who have earned a right to
think for themselves by thought in other fields. They
are, however, very few in number. I doubt whether
the positivists of all nations assembled together would
more than fill the room in which we are gathered.
The doctrine is so immense, so varied, so incapable
of being condensed into a few sentences which speak
home to a man at once (for even its mottos require
Considerable explanation), and so opposed to all
religious thought now existing, that its acceptance
must be very slow. And its acceptance must also be
very diverse.
The books written by Comte alone
far exceed the bible in extent, even the bible with a
long commentary. They are extremely difficult books,
to read and grasp. Probably ho two positivists really
agree in detail, any more than any two Christians. As
amatter of fact the small number of English positivists
is already divided into two camps, one of which is
affiliated to the French headship, and the other not.
Comte himself was of opinion that the conception of
Humanity must be put in the foreground and every
thing subordinated to that. But a complete grasp of
that conception is by no means easy. Nor is it
possible to make it popular, so far as I can see. In
�45
purposely said nothing (Note 24, p. 62). Comte boasts
that his system should be always discussible. His
regulations would make such discussions illusory.
His Philosophy seemed to open up the universe to
science. ITis Polity would confine the limits of in
quiry to only part of the facts known even when he
was alive. None of his followers, perhaps, since his
“ transformation,” to use their technical term, recog
nise in any follower, even the excellent M. Laffitte,
whom Comte himself designated, any power so to
limit the acquisition of knowledge. We all know
hour much Humanity suffered from the long mastery
of Aristotle, the greatest thinker that perhaps the
world has known. Let us avoid such a mistake for
the future, and treating Comte’s works and thoughts
as we should treat those of other men for whom we
feel a profound respect, while retaining the liberty of
differing from them in opinion, let us accept what is
accurate, what is orderly, and what is progressive in
Comte’s religion of Humanity (Note 25, p. 65).
Dismissal.
Let us take with us an echo of the hymn just
sung [see next page], the old knightly motto,
“ Do thy duty, tide what may I ”
�47
APPENDIX OF NOTES.
Note i, p.
Influence of Mme de Vaux.—Ks, the works of
Comte are not in every one’s hands, or even in many English
libraries, I think it will be agreeable to the readers of my discourse,
which has been printed at the request of the Committee of South
Place Chapel, if I cite the words of the original on some points of
importance. In this “ Invocation,” addressing Mme. Clotilde
de Vaux, on the24thJuly, 1854, as “Noble et tendre patronne,”
he says: “Mon ouvrage fondamental avait irrevocablement
devoile l’existence composee et continue qui domine de plus en
plus l’ensemble des affaires terrestres. Il avait meme proclame
graduellement la preponderance du coeur sur l’esprit, comme
unique source, spontanee ou systematique, de 1 harmonie humaine.
La nature et la destinee du Grand-Etre se trouvant ainsi revelees,
il suffisait, pour instituer la religion universelle, qu’une sainte
tendresse me rendit assez familier le principe fondamental ou
venait d’aboutir ma premiere vie. Voila comment le dogme de
l’Humanite surgit, a l’anniversaire initial de notre catastrophe,
dans le cours decisif d’ou derive tout ce traite,”—Politique
positive, iv. 546. See the end of note 24.
Note 2, p. 9.—Chapter Headings of Comte's Positive Morality.
These are printed at length in Dr. Robinet’s life of Comte, pp.
295-6, and are briefly as follows : Vol. I, Theoretical Morals or
Knowledge of Human Nature. Introduction on Primary and
Secondary Philosophy and Theoretical Morals. Chapters on the
Theories of: 1, the brain ; 2, the Great Being; 3, Unity; 4, Life ;
5, the Sentiments ; 6, the Intellect; 7, Activity ; Conclusion on
Synthesis, Sympathy and Religion. Vol. 2 : Practical Morals or
�faire directement remonter notre gratitude. Car, une telle discontinuite morale, outre son injustice evidente, deviendrait
aussitot contraire a la principale destination de notre culte, en
nous detournant de l’adoration immediate, seule pleinement
conforme a notre nature affective. Le regime provisoire qui
Unit de nos jours n’a que trop manifeste ce grave danger, puisque
la plupart des remerciments adresses a l’etre fictif y constituaient
autant d’actes d’ ingratitude envers l’Humanite,seul auteur reel des
bienfaits correspondants. En un mot, notre reconnaissance doit
considerer les produits, sans remonter aux materiaux, qui n’offrent
presque jamais un merite suffisant. Meme dans l’ordre reel,
il importe encore davantage aux coeur qu’a l’esprit de ne franchir
aucun intermediaire essentiel. A plus forte raison, nos affections
doivent-elles etre encore mieux preservees que nos pensees de
toute destination chimerique, quand leur veritable cours est devenu
possible. Si l’adoration des puissances Actives fut moralemen1
indispensable tant que le vrai Grand-Etrene pouvaitassez surgii,
elle ne tendrait desormais qu’a nous detoumer du seul cube qui
puisse nous ameliorer. Ceux done qui s’efforcent de la prolonger
aujourd’hui la toument, a leur insu, contre sa juste destination,
consistant a diriger l’essor provisoire de nos meilleurs sentiments,
sous la regence de Dieu, pendant la longue minorite de
l’Humanite.” Politique Positive'A, 57-8.
Note 4, p. 11. — The Religion of Humanity has no need to
disprove Theism.— “Les hypotheses indiscutables ne comportent
pas plus de negation que d'affirmation. On les admet et les ecarte,
suivant les besoins qu’elles permettent ou cessent de satisfaire,
sans les affirmer ni les nier. Voila tout ce que le positivisme peut
maintenant accorder a la croyance des purs deistes. Mais cette
apparente concession se trouve essentiellement anullee par son ex
tension necessaire, et mieux meritee, aux thelogismes vraiment organiques, quelqu’ils soient, monotheiques, chretiens, musulmans,
ou juifs, et polytheiques, greco-romains, indous, &c. Partout
�avec un degre d’importance proportionne a la dignite del’espece
et a l’efficacite de l’individu, Pour apprecier cet indispensable
complement, nous n’avons qu’a supposer qu’il nous manque.
On n’hesite point alors a regarder tels chevaux, chiens, boeufs,
•&c., commeplus estimables que certains hommes.” Catechisme
Positiviste, pp. 30-1.
Note 6, p. 14.—Rule of the Dead.—“ Ainsi, la vrai sociabilite
consiste davantage dans la continuity successive que dans la
solidarity actuelle. Les vivants sont toujours, et de plus en plus,
gouvernes necessairement par les morts : telle est la loi fondamentale de l’ordre humain.” Catechisme Positiviste, p. 32.
Note 7, p. 14. — Unconscious Subjective Existence.—This dis
tinction of the “ conscious ’ ’ and “ unconscious ” subj ective existences
is, so far as I can remember, not indicated by Comte, who confines
his definition to the “ conscious” part. I considered it, however,
important to note that every man is actually immortal in his
effects on the world, by the mere fact of his having once lived
•Objectively, and hence by communication or heredity having
swayed the future. Otherwise I follow the Catechisme Positiviste,
pp. 32-3, very closely.
Note 8, p. 14.-—God's independence of Man.—See Imitation,iv., 12, 3, “ Tu mei indiges, non ego tui indigeo,” which Comte
'quotes as the second line of Corneille’s paraphrase, in the
following stanza, referring to importunate prayer,
“Cette importunite n’est jamais incivile ;
Je te suis necessaire et tum’es inutile ;
Tu ne viens pas a moi pour me sanctifier,
Mais je m’abaisse a toi pour te justifier.”
Comte, of course, does not quote the line from Milton on his
own blindness, sonnet xix.
Note 9, p. 24.—Comte's indebtedness to de Plainville.—'11 Je
dois ici specifier directement que j’ai principalement choisi le
�mode plus complexe de l’esprit scientifique. Mais, sans attacher
a. cette observation personnelle une importance exageree, il
demeure incontestable que le sentiment du progres des sciences
a pu seul inspirer a Pascal [b. 1623, d. 1662] cet admirable
aphorisme, a jamais fondamental; ‘Toute la succession des
homines, pendant la longue suite des siecles, doit etre consideree
■comme un seul homme, qui subsiste toujours et qui apprend
continuellement. ’ ” Philosophic Positive, iv. 234.
Note 13.P.28.— TheCalendarvs described in the special work,
-quoted in note 10, 4th ed., 1852, and in the Pol. Pos., iv.
398-404, ed. 1854.
Positivist years are found by subtracting
1788 from the Christian date.
Note 14. p. 33.—-The Reprobates.—By a curious error when
this discourse was delivered, I substituted the name of Voltaire
for Napoleon. Comte has given up a day to Voltaire, (II
Shakspere) but only as a tragic poet. Thus he says {Cal. Pos.
4th ed. p. 17). “ Dans 1’elaboration d’un systeme destine surtout a faire irrevocablement prevaloir l’esprit organique sur
l’esprit critique, j’ai rigoureusement exclu tous ceux qui n’ont
reellement que detruit, sans rien construire. On n’y trouvera
done ni Luther, ni Calvin, ni Rousseau ; Voltaire n’y figure
qu’au titre de poete traigique. Malgre leur utilite passagere
■ces services negatifs exigent trop peu de valeur intellectuelle,
ct supposent trop de vicieuses dispositions morales pour admettre
une telle consecration personnelle.”
Philip II. disappeared
from the Reprobates in the third ed. of the Calendar, and in
Politique Positive iv. 404, the festival of Reprobation was al
together abolished with the words: “Apres une modification
decisive, suggeree par une reclamation feminine, (Miss Harriett
Martineau, I believe.) “ les dignes remonstrances d’un positiviste
britannique m’ont suscite des reflexions qui me determinent a
supprimer entierement l’institution projetee.
Note 15, p. 33.—Letter of Comte on the Lives of the Worthies
�55
daily supplied by M. Pierre Laffitte’s “Les Grands types de
1’Humanite, appreciation systematique des principaux agents
de revolution humaine,” 2 vol. 8vo., price io francs, and
in die Revue Occidentale, for 1st of May and 1st of September,
1880, M. Paul Foucart has given an appreciation of Sophie
Germain, who is made an adjunct of Hegel for 27 Descartes.
But both of these are too long for manuals. What is much
wanted for positivism is a little book of 150 pages, closely
printed, 20 being devoted to an introduction, and 10 to each
month, namely 2 to each monthly and 1 to each weekly type,
with 1 to the daily types of each whole week. Such a work
would have an interest far beyond positivism, and would tend to
give a concrete meaning to the term Religion of Humanity,
which is much wanted. It is only the other day that Dr. Fraser,
the bishop of Manchester, (roused to a knowledge of the exis
tence of Positivism, most probably by the fact that Positivist
services have recently been held at 175, Islington, Liverpool,) in
a sermon on Atheism, spoke of “ a certain new theory called the
Positivist School of Philosophy.” Such a method of speaking
Should not be possible. Besides such a manual, I had expressed
a wish for a more popular and less systematic treatise than the
Catechism. To this Comte replied in the letter just quoted :
“ Je pense comme vous sur l’utilite d’un manuel positiviste
plus populaire et moins systematique que notre catechisme,
mais il ne pent emaner que d’une femme.
Nous 1 aurions
cleja si je n’etais pas, depuis dix ans, objectivement piive de
l'angelique collegue qui regenera mon ceeur, et par suite com-
pleta Pessor.de mon esprit.”
Note 16. p. 36.—ComtdsDefinition of Prayer.— “ Prier, c’est
tout ensemble aimer et penser, si la priere reste purement mentale ; tantot aimer en pensant, et tantot penser en aimant,
suivant la disposition dominante. Mais si la priere devient
aussi orale, selon sa vraie nature, alors prier constitue a la fois
�3 Mercury, 4 Jupiter, 5 Venus, 6 Saturn, and 7 the Sun.
But after the advent of the abstract cult, apparently, he wished
to change the dedication, without changing their names, to 1
Homer, 2 Aristotle, 3 Caesar, 4 St. Paul, 5 Charlemagne,
6 Dante, and 7 Descartes, as being the principal organs which
effected the transition from theocracy to sociocracy. {Politique
Pos. iv. 135-6.)
Note 19, p. 37—Mill on Comte's Governors.— “ In each
state thus constituted, the powers of government are to be
vested in a triumvirate of the three principal bankers, who are
to take the foreign, home, and financial departments respectively.
How they are to conduct the government and remain bankers,
does not clearly appear; but it must be intended that they should
combine both offices, for they are to receive no pecuniary remu
neration for the political one.”—J. N. Mill, “ Auguste Comte
and Positivism,” 1865, p. 168.
Note 20, p. 38.—Attitude of Modern Positivists towards
Comte's Regulations for Social and Religious Organisation, and
Comte's letter on the Introduction of Shelley's name in the
Calendar.—A well known Positivist, who was present when
this discourse was delivered, thought I had much overstated the
peremptory nature of Comte's suggestions for social organisation.
He felt sure that Comte did not remotely claim to govern, and
I quite agree that Comte did not in so many words lay claim to
governing, or rather that as a priest he disclaimed so doing.
But it seems to me from my long acquaintance with Comte’s
' writings, that he considered it part of his office as High Priest,
to lay down the principles of practical government, and prescribe
the form that it should take, while in religious and educational
matters especially, he meant what he said, and that with life and
opportunity he would have had his injunctions strictly carried
■out. I think, moreover, that this view is borne out by certain
incidents in Comte’s relations to other thinkers, which I need
�the second canto of the Revolt of Islam, containing a kincl
of anticipation of subjective immortality in the words of Cythna
to Laon :
“ We part to meet again—but yon blue waste,
Yon desert wide and deep, holds no recess
Within whose happy silence, thus embraced
We might survive all ills in one caress :
Nor doth the grave—I fear ’tis passionless—
Nor yon cold vacant Heaven : we meet again
Within the minds of men, whose lips shall bless
Our memory, and whose hopes its light retain
When these dissevered bones are trodden in plain.”
On this Comte observed “Il faut maintenant vous temoigner
ma reconnaissance speciale pour votre communication des
deux extraits du malheureux Shelley, dont j’ai deja porte le
meme jugement que vous, quoique ses poesies me fussent
entierement inconnues jusqu’ici.
Cette precieuse lecture
m’a fait spontanement projeter d’accorder a cet infortunc
genie une commemoration secondaire quancl je reimprimerai le
Qalendrier positiviste. Quoique Byron y soit deja pourvu
d’un digne adjoint, il peut encore admettre celui-la, d apres
une exception motivee, dont la meme semaine [the week of
Milton in the month of Dante] fournit un premier exemple en
faveur de Bunyan, en adoptant une reclamation britannique.
Le couple exceptionnel serait spontanement harmonique, vu
l’analogie de malheur et de precocite, comme de genie, qui
rapproche Shelley de notre eminente Elisa Mercoeur, morte a
26 ans en 1835 [Shelley was drowned at 30 in 1822.] Ses
poesies ne me sont pareillement connues que d’apres les
extraits que j’en ai lus publiquement graves sur sa tombe,
toujours entouree encore cl’admirateurs des deux sexes. Je
n’ai pas eu besom, pour oser l’inscrire a notre calendrier, de
�each side is terraced with a gallery below the terrace 4 m. wide
and 6 m. high. The remaining 40 metres of length are cut off
forming an oblong at the end 160 m. long and 40 wide. In
thb are two squares of 40 m. at each end for the vicarage and
its garden, at the left side and the library and its garden at theyight side. Then two oblongs 40
hy 20 m. contain, next the
vicarage, the Philosophical Presbytery, and next the library the
Positivist School. The middle 40 m. contains the semicircular
apse of the temple and two courts. From the diameter
of the apse of the temple projects its great nave 80 m.
long and 40 m. wide, with a total height of 50 m. Theapse is divided from the nave by two walls which project
12 m. on each side. At the extreme end of the apse stands
the Statue of Humanity. This presumably would resemble theSymbol of Humanity on the Religious Standard—personified
by a woman of thirty, holding her child in her arms (“personnifiee par une femme de trente ans, tenant son fils entre sesbras,” Politique Positive ; i. 387), and hence greatly resembling
the usual figures of the Virgin Mary, but probably with a very
different expression in her face. In front of this, but within the
apse, there would be space for 1,000 women, in the midst of whom
the priest would officiate. On each side the nave a space of 5 m.
wide would be separated off, and divided into 7 chapels on either
side, in groups of 4 nearest the entrance, and 3 nearest the apse,
separated by an empty space of 5 m. These chapels are numbered from the entrance to the apse, Nos. 1 to 7 on the right
on entering, and 8 to 14 on the left. Each of the first thirteen
are dedicated to the patron of the corresponding month, and will
each contain his statue, with busts of his weekly adjuncts,
see above pp. 29-33. The 14th would be dedicated to the thirteen
female saints (names not given), or to Heloise (of Abelard memory)
to whom with Dante’s Beatrice is dedicated 19 St. Paul. The
central part Of the nave is to accommodate 5,000 men. An
�63
s’applique ensuite au Monde, et doit se completer en embrassant
le destin,” {Syn. Sub.?. 18.) The earth is therefore erected
into a Great Fetish, having energy and will, but not intelligence,
which is reserved for Humanity, and Fate is symbolised by space,
called the Great Medium, having sympathy only. “Une
inalterable trinite dirige nos conceptions et nos adorations,
.toujours relatives, d’abord au Grand-Etre, puis au Grand-Fetiche,
enfin au Grand-Milieu. Fondee sur la theorie de la nature
humaine, et sur la loi du classement universel, cette hierarchie
offre un decroissement continu du caractere propre a la synthese
subjective. On y venere au premier rang l’entiere plenitude du
type humain, ou l'intelligence assiste le sentiment pour dirigei
l’activite. Nos hommages y glorifient ensuite le siege actif et
bienveillant dont le concours, volontaiie quoique aveugle, eSL
toujours indispensable a la supreme existence. Il ne se borne
pas a la Terre, avee sa double enveloppe fluide, et comprend aussi
les astres vraiment lies a la planete humaine comme annexes
■objectives ou subjectives ; surtout leSoleil et la Lune que nous
devons specialement honorer (note 18, p. 5d)second culte
succede celui du theatre [that is, abstract space,] passif autant
qu’aveugle, mais toujours bienveillant oil nous rapportons tous
les attributs mate riels, dont sa souplesse sympathique facilite
l’appreciation abstraite a nos cceurs comme a nos esprits.
{Synthase Sub. p. 24.) All this was to have been developed in
the two next volumes. The only existing first volume of the
Synthase, giving a criticism of mathematics without a single
mathematical diagram or symbol, and full of historical references
without the mention of a single name of author or book, so that
it is extremely difficult to follow even for professed mathemati
cians, and written in a very peculiar style, the trick of which,when
explained {Synthese pp. 755'9), I find very disturbing to my own
study, as it was evidently straining to the author himself, is
probably seldom referred to by any Positivist, and its contents
�65
Note 25, p. 45.—Suggestions for the Popularisation of the
Religion of Humanity—Comte’s works already want re-editing
and condensing. A reconstruction of his Philosophy in a much
smaller compass even than Miss Martineau’s abridged trans
lation, and adapted to the advances that human knowledge
has since made, and hence not a mere abstract, is very desirable.*
And a complete re-writing of his Polity, with the excision of
. those parts which are now practically ignored (see notes 20 and
24), that is, of much of the preliminary discourse, and most of
the fourth volume, and a reduction of the remainder to one
volume, would be very desirable. The synthesis might be
entirely neglected. Such is what appears advisable ter me for
those to undertake, who have the interests of the Religion of
Humanity at heart. Christianity would never have existed if it
had had in the first place to be drawn from the Bible and
(Testament. The sects of Protestantism show us clearly the
effects of such study by those unqualified to pass a judgment,
including, perhaps, even the greater number of Christian priests.
Not one in a hundred thousand of those who might be led to
exercise the Religion of Humanity could possibly peruse Comte s
original works, either in French or any other language. Such
a book, therefore, should be written by qualified existing Posi
tivists as could “be understanded of the people.
Systematic
language, which when not thoroughly familiar, veils thought,
and which abounds in all Comte’s later writings, should be
avoided. Much must be laid down dogmatically as conclusions
arrived at by Positivists, and especial care should be taken to
avoid attributing them to the convenient abstraction, “ Posi
tivism.” In short, something clear and hearty should be laid
*’
* In the Revue Occidentale for the day after this discourse was delivered I
MW advertised “ La Philosophie Positive, par Auguste Comte, resumee par
M. Jules Rig, 2 vol., in 8vo.,” so that the same idea seems to have occurred in
part to positivists in Paris.
��j
��
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"Auguste Comte's religion of humanity". A discourse delivered at South Place Chapel, Sunday 31 October, 1880 ... with an appendix of notes.
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Place of publication: London
Collation: 66 p. ; 15 cm.
Notes: Part of Morris Miscellaneous Tracts 2. Contains Appendix of notes "containing justificatory citations from Comte's works - and from two unpublished private letters from Comte to the Author, with other matter". Contains Order of the Service of which the Discourse formed a part. Incomplete copy. Author cited as Alexander J. Ellis on title page. Printed by Frederick G. Hickson & Co. , High Holborn, London.
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1880
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Religion
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Auguste Comte
Humanity
Morris Tracts
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LOVE-LIFE OF AUGUSTE COMTE.
BY JENNIE JUNE CKOLY.
T is said that no man is a hero to his wife or his valet de chambre;
and so inseparable, indeed, is some touch of weakness from poor
human nature, that we are rather apt to expect from the excep
tionally great in some respects, corresponding feebleness in
others, and charitably excuse, or else hold them up to the light, as the
excuse for our own shortcomings.
The private, or emotional life of Auguste Comte is but little known
in this country, and the impressions concerning it, derived mainly from
John ^tuart Mill, is , not’of a character to encourage strict investiga
tion. Even his disciples seem to consider his domestic relations as a
subject to be avoided, and the second part of his great life-work, the
“Politique Positive,” as more the result of the weakness of his heart
than the strength of his head.
* The aim of this brief and necessarily very imperfect sketch is sim
ply to state, facts, to show what justification existed for departure from
conventional standards, and who and what the remarkable woman was
whose brief acquaintance exercised so singular an influence upon the
mind of Comte, and inspired him with those ideas which form the
basis of his ultimate system.
Whatever the weakness or strength of its founder, there is little
doubt that the “ Religion of Humanity ” will live and continue to
attract, as heretofore, the respectful attention of the wisest and best
among us, and with its growth will spring up an interest in that epi
sode of the life of August Comte which unites his. name with that of
Clotilde de Vaux, and accepting her . as the representative of the noblest
attributes of humanity, will place her, toward its religion and its be
lievers, as Laura to Petrarch, as Beatrice to Dante,-as Heloise to Abe
lard, if not, with all reverence be it spoken, as the Virgin Mary to the
Christian Church.
“To-day,” Emerson says, “is king,” but we rarely recognize its
royalty. Laura and Beatrice may have been very ordinary persons to
their intimates, and it is possible that even Joseph saw nothing more
in his wife than many a man believes of the woman he loves. Yet who
would wish to lose the spiritual significance of the Virgin-Mother by
confronting it with the common-place fact of her daily life. Clotilde
T
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COMTE.
de Vaux may have realized to no other person the remarkable qualities
with which Comte’s imagination invested her, but the evidence she has
left of high intellectual ability, united with singular purity and devo
tion, lifts her above the common-place, while, apart from any idealiza
tion by Comte, her personal history is clothed with a strange, sad, and
most romantic interest.
Born of a respectable but obscure family, beautiful, delicate, and
surrounded always by an air of touching sadness, which seemed a
prophecy of her future destiny, Madame de Vaux became early the wife
of a man who was subsequently convicted of a capital crime, impris
oned, and finally sent to the galleys, yet, by the laws of France, still
maintained his right and authority as her husband.
It was in this position that Comte met her.
Comte himself was born, as Robinet, his biographer, informs us, of
an admirable mother, Mme. Rosalie Boyer, a strict Catholic however,
who shared the monarchical tendencies of her husband. She is de
scribed as a woman of great heart, great character, and Comte ascribes
to her all his higher qualities. He admits also that it was through
Clotilde de Vaux that he learned to fully know and appreciate his
mother. His family were in moderate circumstances—his father being
cashier in the department of the Receiver-General. He was born in a
modest house, facing the church of Saint Eulalie, Montpellier; was
sent to school at the age of nine years, and was so precocious that at
ten he criticised with severity and judgment his teachers and their
methods of instruction.
In 1825, twenty years before he met Mme. de Vaux, he contracted a
marriage of convenience, which proved, as he afterwards declared, the
one “ serious ” fault of his life. His wife was a bookseller, an active,
capable woman of business, intelligent, but worldly, as most Parisian
women of the middle classes are, and utterly without sympathy in any
new systems of philosophy or their results. She was proud in her own
way of her husband’s ability, but wished it to be acknowledged by the
world, and she could not forgive in him the unconscious egotisms of a
powerful genius, or the loss of his material opportunities, by his obsti
nate adherence to unpopular opinions and principles.
For seventeen years they lived a life which must have been almost
unendurable to both, for Comte, released as he considered himself by
the greatness of his work from ordinary duties and obligations, was
probably one of the most exigent, exacting, and intolerable of hus
bands to a busy, ambitious, and practical wife, while she became to
him every day more an object of indifference, and even of dread.
Mahomet was happy in having for his first disciple his wife:
Madame Comte realized nothing but the obstinacy which deprived her
husband of honorable positions and material resources. She was quite
willing to assist in building up an honorable home, quite capable of
forming a sound, and even wise judgment on any of the ordinary affairs
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187
of every day; she had literary taste and talent of her own, but believed
thoroughly in putting them to practical use, in employing them to
achieve a recognized name, honor, position, money, and the good-will
of mankind, and she considered Comte’s splendid generalizations as the
chimeras of a distraught brain.
It was unfortunate for both that no children resulted from this illstarred union. The existence of these ties, and the knowledge, through
them, which they would have gained of each other, would undoubtedly
have softened their feelings, and contributed to a better mutual under
standing. But it was not to be. Day by day they drifted more and
more widely apart, until, upon April 5,1842, seventeen years after their
marriage, Mme. Comte left her husband never to return. 1
Although M. Comte had not at that time developed fully his social
theory, his natural instincts, heightened by the respect and veneration
with which his mother had always inspired him, would have compelled
him to endure to the end his self-imposed yoke, and forbidden any
sympathy with the anarchical ideas that were then becoming common
in France. The defection of his wife he accepted with the dignity
with which he had borne his matrimonial infelicity, and considered his
condition of domestic isolation as complete and final. His noble
nature, however, his truthful instincts, his affectionate disposition,
. made this severance of home ties very painful; he realized all the pos
sibilities of true marriage, all the difficulties resulting from a mistake
in this most important act of human life, and his pain was augmented
by the knowledge of the detrimental effect which his matrimonial
blunder would be likely to exert upon his public career. Believing
profoundly in the indissolubility of marriage, insisting with the whole
strength of his powerful intellect on the perfectness and perpetuity of
the marriage relation as the golden band which purifies and holds
society together, his own experience at once justified and illustrated
his theory in his own eyes, yet furnished to carping critics a choice
morsel of gossip, which they were undoubtedly willing to make the
most of.
“Behold the teacher!” “Who lives in glass houses should not
throw stones.” All this, and much more, must have made Comte feel
that a mistaken marriage was the most serious mistake of a man’s life,
and that the evils resulting from it must be borne by the individual,
not thrust upon society. Of course his situation, isolated and stigma
tized without direct act or fault of his own, enabled him more readily
to appreciate the peculiarity of the woman’s position whose name was
afterwards to be associated with his own—Madame Clotilde de Vaux.
His first meeting with this still young and gifted lady took place in
1845, three years after his wife had left him. It is admitted by all that
she possessed graces of person combined with remarkable purity, ten.derness, and dignity of character. The singular coincidence of their
position attracted them all the more powerfully toward each other,
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COMTE.
and the admirable delicacy and consistency which had distinguished
her conduct in her peculiarly trying and unfortunate position, estab
lished at once a claim upon Auguste Comte’s sympathies.
Moreover, Madame de Vaux, notwithstanding that she possessed a
mind of the finest order, was as little, understood by her family circle
as Comte by the rest of the world—a fact which, united with Madame
de Vaux’s convictions in regard to the moral nature and duties of
women, so different from those of her best-known contemporaries, but
•in exact accordance with Comte’s predilections, created a new bond be
tween them. Under th^se circumstances, it is not surprising that,
Clotilde de Vaux became to Comte a revelation of the power, purity,
genius, and suffering of woman, or that, having worked out his theory
of Divine Humanity, he should recognize its highest development in
her noble, self-sacrificing life.
It is a fact worthy of particular remark that, notwithstanding the
exceptional nature of their mutual positions, no breath of suspicion,
even in France, ever attached to their relationship. Slander itself was
dumb before the purity of her character, the modesty, and dignity of
her life. Her intercourse with Comte was wholly that of master and
pupil; and although he fully acknowledges that to her he was indebted
for his entire knowledge and education of the heart, yet this was un
conscious on her part, and she hardly realized that the chivalrous and
reverential nature of his sentiments toward her, and all women, owed
their development and expression mainly to herself.
But with the real claims of Madame de Vaux to the moral and in
tellectual height to which Comte elevated her, we have little to do. To
Comte she gave the key to one half, and the diviner half, of the human
race, and became at once the motive and the inspiration to that part of
his work which had been left incomplete. His discovery of sociology,
of a new philosophy of life based upon the laws of exact science, placed
him upon a level with Aristotle and Bacon; his realization of the per
fectness of moral quality, through Clotilde de Vaux, of its high uses,
unfolded to him a new religion, a religion of Man, or Humanity, which
can only be expressed by the homage paid to the moral qualities as em
bodied in their acknowledged representative, Woman. What individ
uals, Laura, Clotilde, or Beatrice, were in themselves, matters, we re
peat it, very little. It is enough that they stand as the types of Woman,
as the ideals of Mother, Daughter, Wife, Sister, Friend, or all of these
—as the embodiment of the sentiments and qualities which men most
venerate and admire, and which act upon them as the strongest incen
tive to worthy deeds.
In the preface to his Positive Catechism, which consists bf a series
of imaginary questions and answers between himself and adopted
daughter, which relation he had intended to legalize with Madame de
Vaux, if she had lived. Comte says, in reference to her—
“Through her I have at length become for Humanity, in the strict
I
�THE LOYK-LIFE
OF AUGUSTE
COMTE.
IS 9
est sense, a twofold organ, as may any one who has reaped the full
advantages of woman’s influence. My career had been that of Aris
totle, I should have wanted energy for that of St. Paul, but for her. I
had extracted sound philosophy from real science ;»I was enabled by
her to found on the basis of that philosophy the universal religion.”
If Clotilde de Vaux had left no other evidence than Comte’s com
memoration of her worthiness, she would still stand in the niche of the
Temple of Humanity as its first high-priestess—as the eternal mother
of that ideal Woman whose image is enshrined in all good men’s
hearts, and is dimly realized in the goodness, purity, and self-sacrific
ing love of some every-day sister, wife, or mother.
But young as Madame de Vaux was at the time of her death, un
fortunately suppressed as the most important work of her life was by
the interference of relatives, she still left enough behind to show that
she was a woman true to all a woman’s best instincts, to all a man’s
' noblest ideals of Womanhood. Like Comte, her nature remained unwarped by the sad issue of her own conjugal relations. Her little
work, “ Lucie,” written altogether from her own inspiration, and before
her acquaintance with Comte, reveals at once a charming tenderness,
allied with real strength. Individual unhappiness did not lead her, as
it would a weaker nature, to denounce marriage, or seek in license the
remedy for social ills. On the contrary, in this work she idealizes mar
riage, accepts motherhood as the natural function of the mass of
women, anticipates Comte’s theory of protection for women, and de
mands governmental institutions for the aid and guardianship of un
protected women. Moreover, her advocacy of a true home-life for
women had more force in France than in this country, because there
the doctrine of individualism in marriage had been to a certain extent
conceded, and the relationship already assumed a business aspect
almost unknown here. The women of the middle classes, it is well
known, nearly control the retail trade of Paris, and their mercantile
activity and preoccupation undoubtedly prevents the realization of the
comfort and domesticity which belongs to the English acceptation of
the word home ; and while it has developed shrewdness and business
tact, certainly detracts somewhat from the reserve and delicacy which
naturally belongs to women.
In Comte’s theory of marriage, individual rights are not allowed a
place. The institution he considered necessary to the happiness of in
dividuals and the well-being of society, but the former he subordinates
to the latter, and he exacts from all men and women who take upon
themselves the obligations of marriage, a stern fulfilment of its re
quirements. He quotes with great approval the remarks of Madame
de Vaux, that “great natures will not involve others in their own sor
rows and difficulties,” and insists that the mistake of an individual
should be confined as much as possible to him or herself, and not hung
as a load upon the back of society.
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THE
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OF
AUGUSTE
COMTE.
It is for its singular truth, purity, and integrity, that Madame
Clotilde de Vaux’s contribution to the literature of her day deserves
preservation, and for this reason we reproduce it here. Her clear mind
was alike uninfluenced by custom or the sophistical ideas of anarchists
and so-called reformers. She did not give to woman all the scope that
she must claim for herself while she possesses ability, but she fully
recognized the fact that the home is the woman’s rightful domain, that
the employment of her strength, talent and energies in other directions,
and especially as a means of livelihood, should be exceptional; that
the woman cannot be the mother and also the provider, and that no
woman ever tries to fill the two positions without feeling that she is
constantly sacrificing the greater to the less.
A presentation of a theory of marriage which recognizes its full
value, its sacredness, and its indissolubility, seems particularly desir
able just now, and in this country, where individualism is making it
self strongly felt, and social evils are seeking a remedy in the easy dis
ruption of the marriage bond. The position which Comte assigns to
Woman is clearly stated in the following extract from the general View
of Positivism :
“ The social mission of Woman, in the Positive system, follows as a
natural consequence from the qualities peculiar to her nature. In
the most essential attribute of the human race, the tendency to place
social above personal feeling, she is undoubtedly superior to man.
Morally, therefore, and apart from all material considerations, she
merits always our loving veneration, as the purest and simplest im
personation of Humanity who can never be adequately represented in
any masculine form. But these qualities do not involve the possession
of political power, which is sometimes claimed for women, with or
without their own consent. In that which is the great object of life
they are superior to men, but in the various means of obtaining that
object they are undoubtedly inferior. In all kinds of force, whether
physical, intellectual, or practical, it is certain than Man surpasses
Woman in accordance with a general law which prevails throughout
the animal kingdom. Now, practical life is necessarily governed by
force rather than by affection, because it requires unremitting and
laborious activity. If there were nothing else to do but to love, as in
the Christian Utopia of a future life in which there are no material
wants, Woman would be supreme. But life is surrounded with diffi
culties, which it needs all our thoughts and energies to avoid; therefore
Man takes the command notwithstanding his inferiority in goodness.
Success in all great efforts depends more upon energy and talent than
upon moral excellence, although this condition reacts strongly upon the
others. Thus the three elements of our moral constitution do not act
in perfect harmony. Force is naturally supreme, and all that women
can do is to modify it by affection. Justly conscious of their superior
ity in strength of feeling, they endeavor to assert their influence in a
�THE
LOPE-LIFE
OF AUGUSTE
COMTE.
191
way which is often attributed by superficial observers to the mere love
of power. But experience always teaches them that in a world where
the simplest necessaries of life are scarce and difficult to procure, power
must belong to the strongest, though the latter may deserve it best.
With all their efforts, they never can do more than modify the harsh
ness with which men exercise their authority. And' men submit more
readily to this modifying influence from feeling that in the highest at
tributes of humanity women are their superiors. They see that their
own supremacy is due principally to the material necessities of life,
provision for which calls into play the self-regarding rather than the
social instincts; hence we find it the case in every phase of human so
ciety, that women’s life is essentially domestic, public life being prin
cipally confined to men. Civilization, so far from effacing this natural
distinction, tends, as I shall afterwards show, to develop it, while rem
edying its abuses.”
The following “ Complement of the Dedication ” to Mad. Clotilde
de Vaux is from the pen of Auguste Comte, and will be found in his
last great work. It is followed by her novelette of “ Lucie ” and her
poem, “ Thoughts of the Flowers,” which Comte repeated every morn
ing for the nine years preceding his death.
COMPLEMENT OF THE DEDICATION.
Paris, 12th Dante, 62.
Saturday, July 27th, 1850.
In order to complete this exceptional dedication, I think I should add to it the
only composition published by my sacred colleague. This touching novel, of which
the principal situation essentially characterizes the conjugal destiny of the unhappy
Clotilde, was inserted in the columns of the “National ” on the 20th and 21st of
June, 1845. In reproducing it here, I hope to furnish competent judges with a
direct proof of the exalted nature, intellectual and moral, of the unknown angel
who presides over my second life.
Following this characteristic production, I publish my unedited letter on the
social commemoration, which would have appeared with “ Lucie,” but for the ma
levolence of a well-known journalist, who has proved himself unworthy of confi
dence. This little composition offers a certain historical interest to all those who
understand the Religion of Humanity. They -will see in it the first direct and dis
tinct germs of an immense moral and social synthesis, spontaneously arrived at
through a pure, private effusion. My normal reaction of the heart, on the mind,
was thus manifested several years before I had constructed its definitive theory.
I end this natural complement of my dedication with an unedited canzone, that
Madame de Vaux wished to place in her “ Willelmine,” although she had composed
it in 1843. These graceful strophes, of which Petrarch could have perhaps envied
the sweetness, can indicate the facility and the versatility of a talent worthy of the
highest commendation. The poetical tendency of this exalted soul showed itself
involuntarily, in her most trifling inspirations. IKwould be, for example, suffi
ciently characterized by this melancholy inscription, secretly written at the age of
twenty-two, in an old “ Journal of a Christian,” which I preserve religiously.
“ Precious souvenir of my youth, companion and guide of the holy hours which
have lived for me, and which always recall to my heart the ceremonies, grand and
sweet, of the convent chapel.”
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COMTE.
’‘LUCIE.”
A Novelette, by Clotilde De Vaux.
A few years since, the little town of----- was stupefied by the commission of a
crime complicated with extraordinary circumstances.
A young man, belonging to a distinguished family, had disappeared under a
terrible suspicion. He was accused of having assassinated a banker, his partner,
and stolen from him a considerable amount of valuables. This double crime was
attributed to the fatal passion for gaming. The culprit abandoned, after a few
months of marriage, a young wife endowed with great beauty and the most emi
nent qualities. An orphan, she remained, at twenty years of age, condemned to
isolation, misery, and a position without hope.
The laws granted her spontaneously the separation of person and wealth ; that
is to say, of all that which she had already lost. Her husband’s family lent her a
shelter and a pair of shoes. Rich men who admired her, added to her anguish of
heart insulting offers of protection as disgraceful as they were humiliating.
She was, happily, one of those noble women who accept misfortune more easily
than disgrace. Her clear mind fully unveiled to her the position she was in ; she
comprehended that she owed to her beauty the interest she excited in men ; she
foresaw the dangers that professions of sympathy hide, and wished to draw from
herself alone all mitigation of her fate. This courageous resolution having been
taken, the young wife thought only of executing it. Possessing a remarkable talent,
she proceeded to Paris to make use of it. After several trials, she was admitted as
a teacher into the house of the Abbaye-awe-Bois, where she found an honorable
asylum.
During this time, justice took its course ; active steps sought everywhere for
traces of the fugitive. Already the irritated creditors had divided the property of
the unhappy wife, whose clothing and jewels, even to the little treasures of her
girlhood, had been sold at auction. The interest she inspired was so great, that
strangers voluntarily redeemed these pledges and returned them to her.
One young girl purchased a medallion which contained her portrait, and wore
it like that of her patron saint, and the priest of the place bought her weddingdress to decorate the altar of the Virgin.
These details sensibly affected the unfortunate one. A noble pride became
joined in her heart to a profound sensibility: she felt herself sustained by these
proofs of interest that reached her from so many sources. Filled with terror at the
remembrance of her first love, she considered her chain as a barrier that she had
voluntarily placed between herself and men. The horror and peril of her position
thus escaped her mind, and she accepted without a complaint the unjust decree of
the laws.
An indestructible sentiment, a sweet and holy friendship of childhood, at first
saved this noble heart from the bitter griefs of solitude. Philosophy, so pitiful and
so arid in egotistical souls, developed its magnificent proportions in that of the
young woman. Poor, she found the means of doing good : if she rarely went into
the churches, where frivolity sits side by side with sanctity, she was often met in
the garrets of the poor, where, misfortune hides itself like shame.
Two years slipped by without any event transpiring to change this strange and
unhappy position. Time, which can only increase great sorrows, had impaired,
little by little, the admirable organization of the orphan. To her heroic courage,
to her persevering efforts to tread'the rough path marked out for her, there suc
ceeded a profound dejection. Thirteen letters which have fallen into my hands
paint better than I can the griefs of the weary heart. I ask permission to reproduce
them, and thus finish this history.
�TSE
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OF AUGUSTE
COMTE.
193
FIRST LETTER.
LUCIE TO MADAM M.
I write to thee from Malzéville, where I intend to pass several months, my
beloved. My lungs had need of country air, and country milk ; and our worthy
friends have seized this pretext to invite me to share their pleasant solitude. How
much I love these excellent people ! May I not resemble them, or at least allow
my heart to share in the peace which reigns in the depths of theirs ? Meanwhile I
feel better here : nothing is so healthy as the sight of beautiful nature, and of this
laborious and uniform life which forces the mind to rule itself.
The General awaits the near arrival of his neighbor, who is reputed the bene
factor of all this little region. He is a young man of twenty-six, the possessor of a
handsome fortune, and a sincere disciple of liberal ideas. He has with him his
mother, whom he adores, and of whom they tell a great deal of good.
Thou dost advise me to cultivate flowers so as to wean me from music and
reading. Alas 1 my beloved, are not these the only pleasures that remain to me ?
When I have paid my feeble tribute to friendship, when I have read to the General
some passages in his memoirs, when we have together evoked great and sacred
recollections, or when I have shared with my friend her little domestic cares, I
resign myself to tins absorbing faculty of thinking and feeling, which has become
the resource of my existence ; and yet, no woman loves a peaceful and simple life
more than I. What brilliant pleasures would I not have sacrificed with joy to the
duties and happiness of the family circle ! What successes would not have appeared
silly compared with the caresses of my children ! 0. my friend, maternity, that is
the sentiment whose phantom rises so strong and so impetuous in my heart. This
love, which survives all others, is it not given to woman to purify and mitigate her
her sorrows ?
SECOND LETTER.
MAURICE TO
BOGER.
Roger, I have at last seen this woman, so grand, and so unhappy, of whom thou
didst speak to me with pride. Do not say that “ the die is cast,” if I avow to thee
the deep impression that I have felt at the sight of this young and beautiful martyr
to social injustice. The touching virtues of Lucie, her mind, her unconscious atti
tudes, everything about her bears forever the imprint of a profound grief. One
feels, in seeing her, that she will have need of generosity in order to love. How
ever, is she not free in all honor and reason ? By what astonishing lack of .fore
sight in the laws, may the pure and respected woman find herself chained by
society to the branded being whom it casts from its bosom ?
What do we call civil death ? Is it a phantom ? To what end does society
bind a wife to a man who can no longer give birth but to outcasts ? By what right
does it impose isolation and celibacy on one of its members ? From what motive
does it force a living death, or irregularities which it condemns ?
But I speak as if before judges. Roger, my blood is ready to boil when I see
how the apathy of men produces and seems to sanction misfortune and oppression.
I have just had a belvedere built in sight of Malzéville ; from there, with a tele
scope, I see the whole of thé General’s pretty house. Yesterday, I perceived Lucie,
who was seated on the edge of a small stream of water; her attitude was dejected.
Shall I say it to thee, her looks seemed to me to be often directed toward the south.
Alas ! in seeing her so graceful and so broken, I asked myself with disgust the
secret of certain influences over our hearts. Why do we see vulgar women fasci
nate superior intellects and become the objects of a true worship? How does it
happen that the generosity and nobleness of certain women are seen so often in the
�194
THE
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OF AUGUSTE
COMTE.
power Ol selfishness and grossness? We must give up the explanation of this
enigma.
As thou dost wish a new description of Oneil, I shall tell you, my dear Roger,
that, I have made of it one of the prettiest places in the department. They described
to me lately a recent dispute on my account between the inhabitants of the neigh
boring corporation and an old, decayed gentleman. They excited themselves with
nothing less than a discussion as to whether they owed the title of Chateau to Oneil,
and the first piece of consecrated bread to its proprietor. I have settled the ques
tion by not going to mass, and by calling the whole country my valley.
THIRD LETTER.
MAURICE TO
ROGER.
Never, Roger, never will another woman excite in me the powerful and elevated
sentiments with which the mere sight of Lucie inspires me. Friend, thou hast
spoken truth ; it is in vain that the laws, opinion, and the world raise their triple
barrier between us ; love will reunite us, I feel it. Who knows better than thou
the needs of my heart and its insurmountable repugnance to vulgar joys ? Alas !
before meeting Lucie, I have often felt that it is dangerous to refine its sensations.
A little while ago my mother made her visit to Malzeville. I was curious, I
avow it to thee, to know the impression Lucie would produce upon her. On arriving
before the grating of the little park, we saw her grafting a rose-tree. She was
dressed in white ; a large garden-hat carelessly covered her head, a simple green
ribbon defined her small and elegant waist. One would say, on seeing her, the
sweetest ideal of Galatia.
I was surprised to perceive no emotion on my mother’s face, she. ordinarily so
kind, and who finds so much pleasure in admiring ; she was dignified and cold during
our visit; the words duty and honor found a place in all her phrases. For the first
time I had a glimpse of what is bitter and implacable in feminine rivalries. Guided
by the delicate tact, that the habit of suffering gives, Lucie withdrew before we did,
under some slight pretext. Would that I had dared to follow her, and throw my
self at her feet to protest against my mother’s words.
Roger, this moment settles my fate forever ! I comprehend that it is my duty
to snatch this sweet victim from misfortune. Perish the chimeras that rise up
between us ! I feel myself strong against the false faith of opinion and the blame
of the envious ; may I also be so against the self-abnegation and grandeur of Lucie 1
FOURTH LETTER.
MAURICE
TO ROGER
One could willingly curse civilization and enlightenment, when one sees the
small number of just minds and upright hearts that there are in the world. I could
not tell thee how many pitiful and odious insinuations I have to submit to every
day on Lucie’s account. But, what is not the least shocking, all the honor rests
with these corrupters of morality who stand proudly on their small proprieties as
on a rock of impregnable virtue. It seems, in truth, that success only accompanies
hypocrisy and deceit.
I have just had a painful conversation with my mother, which has only more
strongly confirmed my loyalty and devotion. The latter is a magnificent virtue : it
lives, however, much more willingly on enjoyments than on sacrifices. I have
lately met in the world the young Countess of -------- , whose husband is in the
galleys. She was twenty-four years of age when this fatality overtook her; she
was remarkably pretty and amiable. The worthy L-------- fell in love with her,
and they are united. Well! she told me that what she has had to suffer from her
�TH£
LOVE-LIFE
OF AUGUSTE
COMTE.
195
own family is incalculable. When I expressed to her my astonishment, seeing
their advanced ideas in everything, she answered me, “ Are you still in your cate
chism in regard to men ? They authorize me to be an atheist, but not to do with
out the sacraments.”
So it is, my worthy Roger, that this admirable humanity is not yet well rid of
its debt toward the monkeys, from whom several doctors insist that it is directly
descended.
FIFTH LETTER.
MAURICE TO LUCIE.
What have you done, Lucie ? What fatal thought have you obeyed in remov
ing yourself from me ? Alas! it is in vain that I seek to justify your silence; it
weighs on my heart like an icy burden. And meanwhile, only yesterday you made
me cherish my life. Your soul seemed to open itself to hope. When a trifling
danger menaced me on the border of the lake, you came to my assistance without
appearing to fear the presence of those around us. How beautiful you were at that
instant, and how womanly in your devotion ! Have you not read in every glance
the enthusiasm of which you were the object? 0 Lucie, when it was only neces
sary, perhaps, for you to show yourself as you are to soften my mother’s heart, by
what inconceivable misfortune do we find ourselves separated ? But perhaps you
are not the angelic woman that I thought I had discovered; perhaps a generous
love is beyond your powers ? Perhaps !—But of what use are these doubts ? You
alone can restore the peace that you have taken away ; I await a line from you, a
word that may teach me what are your future plans. Think of it! I will not
answer for myself if you continue to overwhelm me with your silence. Manuel is
going post-haste to Paris : in ten hours I may have your reply.
SIXTH LETTER.
MAURICE TO ROGER.
Must it then be so ? Roger, to have been acquainted with her, to know that
which contains this exalted heart, this delicate mind, and perhaps, in a few hours,
to have to deplore her loss! May my misery fall again on those who caused it!
Alas! when 1 accused her with what I have suffered, she was struck down with the
violence of her struggles and her love. I wander like a fool around the General’s
house, interrogating his people unceasingly, and receiving from them only vague
and unsatisfactory answers. Happily, the physician is ignorant of who I am, and
three times a day he forces the truth on my heart. I have this moment quitted
him ; he looked so sad, he seemed so overwhelmed that I conjured him not to hide
the worst from me. He assured me that she still exists ; but he expects a terrible
and inevitable crisis.
P.S.-jShe is saved! One should love as I love to comprehend the magic of
such news. I threw myself at the feet of the physician ; I asked him for his
friendship. In vain he preserved a serious manner; I felt ready to perform any
folly in his presence. He is a distinguished man ; he spoke of Lucie with an enthu
siasm almost equal to my own. But, one thing struck me: he observed me often
with thoughtfulness, and seemed ready to confide a secret to me. I have vainly
endeavored several times to make him speak his mind. He always ends our con
versations about Lucie with this phrase : Society is very culpable.
I have often remarked that prudence is the vice of men in this profession, whose
profound knowledge renders so capable of assisting the social movement. What
important modifications could be produced in the laws by the sole authority of cer
tain scientific facts which remain eternally hidden from the vulgar ! I wish that a
great physician would publish his memoirs ; it would be, in my opinion, a very
useful book to humanity.
�196
THE LOVE-LIFE OF
AUGUSTE
COMTE
SEVENTH LETTER.
MAURICE TO ROGER.
x
Friend, I have seen her again ! Alas ! one dares not think that she still belongs
to earth, so much is her beauty invested with an ideal and celestial character. She
has consented to take her first walk leaning on my arm, and I was astonished at.
the simplicity with which she described to me her sufferings. If I do not deceive
myself, a gleam of hope has crept into her heart; but I have not been able to
explain to myself the meaning of several of her words. As we rested in the shade,
of a little ruined chapel, a villager’s wedding party passed before us. There was
so much happiness and freedom from care on their open countenances, that I could
not suppress a bitter reflection in comparing our destinies. Lucie trembled as she
heard me.
“ 0, my friend I” she exclaimed, “ they are happy ; but it is because their good
fortune neither afflicts nor offends any one.”
I looked at her with surprise ; her face was slightly flushed; she placed my
hand on her heart; then she resumed in a voice serious and moved : “ Maurice, it
is in vain that our misfortune forees us to set ourselves against society ; its institu
tions are great and venerable as the work of ages ; it is unworthy of great natures
to inflict upon others the sorrows that they feel.”
I would have answered her, but she made me a sign with her hand to indicate
that she felt very feeble. It began to grow late. The worthy doctor, who was
already anxious at not seeing Lucie return, came to meet us, and he assisted me in
supporting her as far as the entrance to the park of Malzeville, where it was neces
sary for us to separate.
Roger, all the obstacles that surround me frighten me less than Lucie’s natural
greatness. It is not to false prejudices, I feel it, that such a woman has been able
thus far to immolate the sweetest desires of her heart
EIGHTH LETTER.
LUCIE TO MADAM M.
My Cherished Friend:—Hope has overtaken me on my return to health; Maurice
consents to raise his powerful voice in a protest against the terrible abuse that
separates us. His mother has pressed me to her heart; I shall never forget the
delicious sensations that were mingled at that moment with the bitterness of my
recollections.
O my beloved 1 the love of a pure and good man is a sentiment full of power.
How much do I need courage and strength to resist it! But Maurice’s interests
and honor are dearer to me than my own happiness can be ; and I am also sustained
by the pride of seeing him attempt a noble enterprise ; for it seems to me, that in
it I also shall have accomplished something for humanity.
It was only yesterday that our fate was decided. We had spent the evening
with the worthy physician, whose sentiments are at the same time so gentle and
so elevated. Hardly had we left him, when Maurice impetuously seized my hand ;
and, pressing it to his heart, he swore to protect me in spite of the world, and no
longer permit me to forsake him. I collected my strength to struggle against
these sweet yet terrible emotions. I represented to him that duty commanded him
to endeavor to free me from my bonds, in claiming a wise and just law. I employed
to affect him the arguments which have the most influence on his great heart. I
described with ardor the advantages that society would receive from this courageous
attempt. For him, it was not difficult to interest him in the fate of those beings,
young, feeble, and defenceless, whom an odious bond consigns to despair. He
agreed that the injurious effects of the laws result mainly from the apathy of men,
and that it is always honorable and useful to struggle against oppression.
�THE LOVE-LIFE
OF AUGUSTE
COMTE.
197
We considered then our position from all points of view. Maurice agreed that
a tie like that which he was advising me to contract would suffice for happiness,
and that he would renounce, without the least regret, a world which sacrifices true
happiness to prejudices arrogantly adorned with the title of propriety. I confessed
to him that I did not feel myself high enough or low enough to brave opinion, and
that it would be sweet to me to be able to surround our love with the respect of
honest families.
He gently combated my ideas ; but the thought of his mother was joined in his
heart with all the elevated sentiments that belong to him. He finished by prom
ising me to address a petition to the Chamber of Deputies, and to await patiently
the result.
I threw myself at the feet of this man so dear, shedding tears of gratitude and
love. The efforts that I had made to control myself had so exhausted my strength
that it seemed to me that life was going to abandon me. I never felt its value so
much as at that moment.
O, my friend I thou who dost live calm and happy with the man of thy choice,
thou wilt comprehend all that passes in my heart. Thou knowest if I share the
ridicule poured upon those women who wish to be deputies, or who ride on horse
back to demonstrate that they could be at need excellent colonels of dragoons. But
thou knowest that I feel sensibly oppression where it is real. It is in striking a
blow at the true and modest happiness of woman, that the laws force her out of her
sphere, and make her at times forget her sublime destiny. Henrietta, what pleas
ures can exceed those of devotion ? To surround with comfort the man whom we
love, to be good and simple in the family, worthy and self-forgetting outside of it,
is not this our sweetest office and the one which suits us best ? It seems to me
that from the family circle radiates communities and the world, and is it not woman
who is the inspiration of them ?
NINTH LETTER.
MAUBICE TO
ROGER.
. A new grief has just burst upon her ; the monster who chains her to himself
lias been arrested on the frontier and conducted to the galleys at Toulon, where he
goes to suffer his penalty.
This event, which gives such great force to our demands, seems meanwhile to
have weakened Lucie’s courage. This heart so tender has fainted with terror
before the horrible denotement with which the laws associate her. The name that
she still bears echoes within her, loaded with infamy, and re-awakens all her
gloomy recollections. Her imperishable goodness has just added compassion to all
her wrongs. May her strength not be exhausted in this cruel struggle I No, I feel
it, laws cannot be voluntarily immoral and absurd. Evidence strikes men ; they
will break this odious bond which chains the purest being to a galley-slave.
Lucie will still suffer much ; but various circumstances have enlightened me on
all her sentiments, and I shall not sacrifice one of them to love. This noble woman
shall be a proud wife and mother, pure, true, and loving friend. The sacrifices that
she would valiantly accept for herself, she cannot bear the thought of bequeathing
to her children. May she find at last the reward of these sweet virtues ! I shall
rally my strength and my courage to subdue my impatience. 0 Roger! life has
hard trials. I send thee a copy of my petition to the Chamber.
“ Gentlemen Deputies :—There exists in the bosom of the. laws an abuse of
which the extent is frightful; permit me to signalize it by a striking example.
"A woman of twenty-two years, whose heart is pure and full of honor, finds
herself chained by marriage to a galley-slave. Fifteen years of imprisonment,
infamy, scorn, all that which separates virtue from vice, materially annuls this
odious bond.
�198
th/:
L(> rn-i.rPK
o f
augusth
comte.
" The man is civilly (lead; the woman, declared free by the tribunals, regains
possession of his fortune, which she already manages. All her rights are evident;
yet she must renounce the most precious of them, that of using the liberty of her
heart. By an inconceivable lack of foresight in the laws, this woman finds herself
" expelled from their protection, and placed by them between two abysses, misfor
tune and immorality. Which choice dare we assign her ? To adorn herself with
a barren heroism, shall she renounce love and motherhood, those beautiful and
noble rights of the wife ?
“ If isolation weighs like a sentence of death on her heart, and forces her to
contract a tie hostile to society, who will protect her against the evil testimony of
opinion, and against all the dangers attached to a false position ?
“ Between these two, there is a third, into which falls many oppressed and fee
ble natures—it is baseness.
“ Gentlemen deputies, I call your attention to this question of high morals, and
I solicit a law which establishes divorce for a single act of an infamous and criminal
character.”
TENTH LETTER.
MAURICE TO
ROGER.
Our hearts are calmer. Lucie seems happy in seeing me submissive to the laws
which govern society. May she reap the fruit of my patience !
Perhaps I have truly performed a duty. I have suffered so much for some time,
that I can no longer be a very good’judge on matters of wisdom. Abuses shock
me, and oppression inspires me with such horror that I would willingly flee before
it instead of contending with it. It may be that Lucie, in her heroism, is much
nearer than I to simple justice and morality. Few women unite as she does pene
tration and sensibility ; she is eminently loyal and spiritual. The better I under
stand this heart so tender, the more I feel that I could not too well repay her love.
How slowly each day brings the moment that unites us ! I love to surprise her
in the midst of the occupations which she invents for herself, while expecting me,,
she tells me. Yesterday I found her very busy copying a large boo’k of insignifi
cant music designed for schools. As I evinced my astonishment with much per
sistency, she ended by confessing that this work was one of her means of living. I
could not tell thee, Roger, the painful impression that this discovery made upon
me. The true duty of woman, is it not to surround man with the joys and affections
of the domestic hearth, and receive from him in exchange all the means of exist
ence that labor procures ? I would rather see the mother of a poor family washing
hei children s CiOthes, than see her earning a livelihood by her talents away from
home. I except, let it be understood, the eminent woman whose genius forces her
out of the family sphere. Such an one should find in society her free develop
ment ; for other minds are kindled by the exhibition of their powers.
I would not only that women might find in their fathers, their brothers, and
their husbands natural support; but that these supports failing them, they should
be sustained by governments. Institutions should be founded in which to unite
them and make use ot their various talents. There are many kinds of work that
can only be done by women. These labors could be performed in these establish
ments, where feeble and desolate women would at least be assured of a resource
against the wrongs which menace them in a struggle with the world without.
Our- towns would then have vast bazars where wealthy women would go to
choose their attire. We should no longer see poor girls attenuated by forced labor,
often obliged to walk all day to dispose of their work. These means, or others
analogous, would establish a slight proportion between the strength and the duties
of women, which are often so little in harmony.
�ELEVENTH LETTER.
MAURICE
TO ROGER.
Where to find a remnant of zeal in this weary, money-loving society ? Money !
that is the key to their dictionary, the word which we must absolutely grasp to
comprehend them.
I had confided to Count J--------our present position and my proceeding with
the Chamber. He thought he would benefit me by introducing me to several of the
men whom they call wise, no doubt because they have sacrificed the heart for the
good of the head. I did not believe that bluntness could go so far. The conversa
tion of these men resembled a veritable operation in stocks. It was a curious thing
to see their efforts to convert an unworldly person.
The obliging manner in which Count J----- — had introduced me to his circle
made me, in spite of myself, give my evidence. Forced to speak of my sentiments
and my opinions, I became at once the target for the whole assembly. They
defeated me in philosophy and morals. They were going to declare me sublime in
order to get rid of me, when one of the most influential men of the period took
me aside.
“ You resemble,” said he to me, “ a crow which pulls down walnuts. Do not
err thus. You have just offended men who were able and willing to serve you.
Arrange your affairs quickly ; and believe that a hero with fifteen thousand livres
rental is not strong enough to walk alone.”
This language astonished me so much that I remained silent.
“ You come,” he continued, “ to demand divorce; you are authorized by an
example striking enough. Truly, justice and reason are with you. A law restricted
like that which you demand, would pass without the least difficulty, and would be
a real benefit. Very well ! nevertheless, this law, it is a hundred to one, that you
will not obtain it.”
“ It is my conviction,” added he, while I repressed with difficulty a painful im
patience, “ the fault is yours, entirely yours. Wishing to play giant, foolishly
despising the hierarchy, refusing it deference, and exploring for all support the
arsenal of old words, is it not voluntarily taking the role of a dupe, and running,
dagger in hand, into the midst of a pigeon match ? Listen,” said he, “ if you were
not so young, you would be a fool. But that infirmity excuses everything. I offer
you, then, my influence with the ambassador of-------- . You have some position,
a noble figure ; you can advance yourself with him. You love a remarkable
woman, you will give her a station worthy of her; and believe me, love does very
well without marriage.”
Finishing his period, my worthy mentor threw me a significant glance and left,
me. I went to shake hands with Count J—
, so superior to the men by whom
he is surrounded, and I returned to Oneil with rage in my heart.
Roger, I shall promptly investigate what this man has said to me, and see if
there is no longer any trace of justice and honor in humanity. Lucie is too grand
and too pure to stoop before it.
TWELFTH LETTER.
LUCIE TO
MAURICE.
Maurice, you are noble and good. What heart can be more capable than yours
of comprehending justice and reason? 0 best and most generous of men, you to
whom I could have sacrificed with joy the peace of my whole life, could you but
know to what extent yours has been dear and sacred to me ! My beloved, it is in
vain that we attempt to struggle any longer against destiny. My soul is completely
broken under its blows. Alas ! when I gave myself up to the happiness of loving
�200
THE
LOVE-LIFE
OF
AUGUSTE
COMTE.
you, I thought to be able, in my turn, to add a charm to your life. Let me collect
my last powers in one consoling thought, hoping you will restore again to society
and your mother that which they have lost by your devotion to me. How often
have I seen your great soul incensed at the sight of the afflictions that fill the
world ! 0 Maurice! it is delicious to experience all generous emotions. What
destiny is at the same time greater and sweeter than that of the useful man ! Do
you not remember having often envied poor artisans the glory of a trifling dis
covery ? You who can do so much more than they, would you remain inactive ?
Dear, very dear friend, live to imprint on the earth your noble steps. When a man
like you appears in the midst of society, he should either bring to it his tribute of
light and virtue, or condemn himself to the silence and coldness of selfishness. I
know your soul; it is rich, and glowing as the clouds in a beautiful sky; never
would you have found happiness in isolation. Do not renounce family joys ; chil
dren will create great interests in your existence. You will find pleasure in devel
oping in them the noble germs that they will inherit from you. You will make
of their young hearts so many hearths in which the flame of yours will be diffused.
They will surround you with respect and love. O Maurice 1 are not all the felici
ties of life summed up in this single word ?
.
LAST LETTER.
DR.
L--------
TO
DR.
B--------.
My old friend, I approve the means you take in caring for yourself in turn. For
us. who believe in good, it is a painful spectacle that of society in disorder, where
nothing that is noble and great can succeed any longer. I have just witnessed
again one of those sacrifices which shock the heart and the reason. The unfortu
nate young woman whose history I have written to you, expired yesterday in my
arms, broken by sorrows that I refrain from describing to you. The man whom
she loved survived her but a few moments ; it seems as if he could comprehend
only his despair. In vain I tried to lead him to reason and calmness ; he blew out
his brains beside the death-bed. before I was able to prevent his fatal design.
Those who have known the interesting and unhappy woman whose loss I deplore, .
will comprehend the fatal passion that she inspired. She had one of those rare
organizations in which the heart and mind are equally balanced. No woman felt
more than she the possibilities of her position. She might have been an accom
plished mother and wife. Alas ! in seeing her die in my arms at the age when one
should live, I have painfully appreciated how little power is given to man to
repair the evil that he causes.
�
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Love-life of Auguste Comte
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Croly, Jennie June [1829-1901]
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Place of publication: New York
Collation: [185]-201 p. ; 26 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. From Modern Thinker, no. 1, 1870. Printed in red on pale yellow paper. The pseudonym of Jane Cunningham Croly, an English-born American journalist and clubwoman whose popular writings and socially conscious advocacy reflected her belief that equal rights and economic independence for women would allow them to become fully responsible, productive citizens. Includes a letter from Auguste Comte to Clothilde de Vaux, 'Lucie' a novelette by Vaux and her poem 'The Thoughts of a Flower'.
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[1890]
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Philosophy
Auguste Comte
Clothilde de Vaux
Conway Tracts
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Text
•nil
THE NEW RELIGION IN ITS ATTITUDE
TOWARDS THE OLD.
yd
A SERMON
PREACHED AT
iinti
#nutjr
/fete, Wnuimunrflr,
&J
WEDNESDAY, 19th MOSES, 71 [19th JANUARY, 1859],
aal
ON THE
ANNIVERSARY OF THE BIRTH OF AUGUSTE COMTE,
I
19th JANUARY, 1798.
fygm.
M
By RICHARD CONGREVE.
PRINTED AND PUBLISHED BY W. POLLEY,
HIGH STREET, WANDSWORTH.
1859.
'ice Threepence^
��A SERMON.
I would ask you fora few minutes to turn your thoughts
to the other members of our church, wherever they may
be, and more especially to the two centres, where, on
this day, a similar act of worship will be performed—
Paris, and Long Island, New York.
I read rather than speak to you, as our small number
makes speaking difficult. It is scarcely possible to
avoid a conversational style when there are but few
present. Yet my wish is to avoid it to-day, for reasons
which I need not here state. When writing, though
we write what is to be heard directly by a few only,
and though perhaps it is a good rule to write with some
one person ever, as it were, before one, yet we can keep
the consciousness that what we write may be heard by
a larger circle outside, and whilst the one person pre
serves us from vagueness, the sense of the larger
audience stimulates and controls. I would ask you to
keep this in mind, if what I have written seem out of
place in so small a congregation.
I use the word “ congregation” purposely, as the
technical term for a religious meeting, for such I con
sider this. I do not, I am aware, speak to you as a
Priest of Humanity. My age is a bar to that. Nor
were our church in possession of its full organization,
should I speak as one of the second order of her ministers
—as a vicar. My insufficient scientific training would
prevent me. But under existing circumstances, I feel
�4
that Mr. Edger is right in saying that I exercise in a
sense the vicar’s office. Where there are disciples or
members, there, however limited their number, is a
church. We have a faith, the outlines of a ritual, and
sufficient members. It would be an undue shrinking
from responsibility not in such a case to supply, within
the limits of what is absolutely necessary, that which
alone is wanting—a ministration. I look on this dis
course as the first definite act of such a ministration;
and though in the immediate present the case is not
very likely to occur, yet should it occur, should there
be a call for other acts of a minister, such as the ad
ministration of the indispensable sacraments, I mean
Presentation and Marriage, I feel warranted in saying
that I should have’ power to administer them with the
full sanction of our central direction, duly sought and
obtained. For the present, preaching is all we want,
and that part of our institutions I hereby inaugurate.
I am aware that such a step implies much; that it im
poses obligations. I accept its consequences—I will
meet those obligations to the full measure of my
strength I have during the last few months anxiously
tested our position and its needs. I have listened to
the objections made to us, to the advice offered. I have
examined also the position of our opponents, whether
friendly or not. I have also looked at the general state
of our country; the evils under which it labours, and
their remedies ; the state of opinion, and the measures
which, with a fair attention to prudence, we may
attempt. The general conclusion I have come to is,
that the boldest course is the wisest, that the doctrine
we advocate, the faith we hold, must be put forward as
a religion, as something to believe in and live by—not
as something which demands intellectual assent; that
here in England we can be nothing if we do not claim,
�5
and show the grounds for our claim, to be everything-;
that we must make it clear that we are not a philoso
phical school, but a church. On the practical measures
which this conclusion involves I will not detain you
now. My only aim has been to make it quite clear in
what light I look on this present act of joint religion,
as the inauguration, however imperfect, of the minis
terial functions in the English branch of the Church of
Humanity.
Two days have been set apart as festivals of the
Religion of Humanity. Both have reference to its
founder. The one commemorates the birth, the other
the death, of our Master, Teacher, and Guide, Auguste
Comte. On the latter, in September, in the present
state of things, it is an object, as far as possible, to
make the celebration of his memory as collective an act
as possible. Whenever we have it in our power, we
should, I think, consider it as a duty to join with our
brothers, of whatever nation, assembled at Paris, to
visit the tomb of our founder, and be present at such
ceremony as our head shall think proper. On the day
set apart in memory of his birth, the nature of the case,
and our local separation, rather point to a national
celebration at the outset, to merge, as our faith extends,
in more local ones.
I have at times regretted the choice of this second
day. I have wished that the first of the year had
been taken. I have wished, that is, that there had
been one directly personal day, whilst the second had
been at once consecrated as the Festival of Humanity.
Yet it is more in the spirit of our religion to accept
cheerfully what has been done, and turn it to the best
account. The ground of the decision was, I believe,
that we were not ripe for the more abstract worship;
that in our existing state we could join most truly and
�6
with most reality in such worship as had direct refer
ence to our founder. This language of course implies
that the other had been better, and points us onward
to that riper state. How, then, can we best make this
day serve that purpose—let it keep, that is, its own
character as a personal festival, at the same time that
it assumes a preparatory character as leading on to the
direct worship of Humanity, which I confidently trust
will ere long be begun? A comparison of the two
events which we commemorate will give us the answer.
When on its anniversary we mourn our master’s death,
we naturally concentrate our attention on him, on his
life and services. We worship Humanity in and
through her noblest servant and organ, Auguste Comte.
Our worship of her takes something of an indirect
character; we insist more on the individual instrument
and on the work done, less on the power which it
served or on the cause in which it was done.
To-day, on the other hand, we may take a different
view. Placing ourselves, as we naturally do, at a
period prior to the work which Comte did, we ask our
selves what was the preparation made for it? And
the answer makes us look back on the past which had
preceded him—on the upward movement of our race,
on the accumulation of materials, on the means placed
at his disposal. We concentrate, then, our attention,
not now on the work done, but on the cause in which
it was done; not on the servant, but on the power he
served; not on the product, but on the producer. We
reverse the former process, and contemplate Comte in
and through Humanity.
So looked at, both festivals equally bear on one of
the most prominent characteristics of our religion—the
worship of the dead. In the one, we worship them in
and through the last and greatest of those eminent few
�7
who, being dead, yet speak to the race of which they
were the servants. In the other, we worship implicitly
the aggregate of those whose collective services had
prepared his way, who had hewn the materials which
he was to employ in his construction. We worship
that ever-increasing portion of humanity to which he
is now joined, which comprehends all those who have
lived worthily. Again, the second is the more collec
tive, the first the more individual view.
Let us place ourselves in thought at the period of
Comte’s birth, quite at the end of the eighteenth cen
tury, and estimate, on as comprehensive a scale as we
can, the result of the past history of our race and its
then condition, at the time, that is, prior to the first
promulgation of his conceptions. The prevalent feel
ing was one of uncertainty, distrust, almost despair.
Movement there had been, and still was; and that the
movement in the past had been, in the ordinary sense,
a progress, was scarcely denied. Whether it was so in
the present, was a matter of question. Looking back,
men saw that one organization after another had been
tried, and attentive study might show that each succes
sive one had been larger than the last. All, however,
including the last and widest, that of Catholicism, had
failed; or, at least we may say, it had been broken up
for a time, so that even its most devoted admirers only
ventured to put its restoration as a possible alternative.
The crash of the old society still ringing in their ears,
men were glad to accept any temporary shelter which
might avert anarchy; but such shelter as they found
could satisfy no competent judge. They questioned
history, and whatever the value of the answers they
elicited, they did not succeed in so interpreting her
teaching as to draw any guiding principle from it.
They saw that not merely temporal organizations, king
�8
doms and empires, had broken up, but that spiritual
ones also had ceased to command men’s faith. They
were looked on as fancies which the world had out
grown ; disencumbered from which we might proceed
onwards without hesitation. In a word, the intellect
of man had acquiesced in denial, in negation. Yet it
was clear to the blindest, for it was subsequent to the
great crisis of 1793 and 1794, that the heart of man
had not, and could not, acquiesce in negation and de
nial ; that it was at issue with the conclusions of the
intellect; or that, if it accepted them, the result was
evil. For the nature of man was there still with its
eternal combination of two elements, eternal under
every difference of name, its selfishness and its un
selfishness. The first was universally recognised, by
some even made to constitute the whole nature; the
second was only recognised as an independent element
by a few; yet its existence was felt by the vast ma
jority, felt if not explicitly acknowledged. Science and
feeling were at variance. The questions put by the
heart were disallowed by the intellect, whilst the
conclusions of the intellect were rejected by the heart.
Under such conditions action was difficult.
Had, then, the past been a failure ? Had the efforts
of the human race been wasted ? had its movements
been governed by no law, and so did they afford no
light for the future? Was all to begin again, and
without any definite aim was society to go through a
cycle of new changes to end in a new crash, instinc
tively suiting itself to its wants, and turning itself,
like the sick man, only to get a change of position,
under the impulse of mere weariness? Was history
but a record of action, with an interest of its own but
with no teaching, of the same character as a work of
fiction, serving to occupy the learned, or to amuse
those who had a taste for it ?
�9
But ten years before Comte’s birth, a different feeling
had been common. The European world had been
full of hope on the eve of a great change which had
held out the brightest prospects—a new era of justice,
and peace, and universal brotherhood. But the change
had come ; the event had disappointed all, and a gene
ral lassitude was the consequence. A large destruction
had taken place, but no new construction had followed;
and men were building again their temporary shelter
with the materials which had failed them so often.
The consciousness of this was discouraging.
In all times, since the earliest dawn of history, men
who had not been absorbed in the immediate present
had looked inquiringly on the spectacle of man’s nature
and human society, and had sought to give a reason to
themselves of what they saw. As the race grew
older, and its experience consequently increased, the
judgments of such inquirers had become more com
prehensive. An immutable destiny had presided over
human action as over the order of nature, nay, even
over the gods whom men and nature equally obeyed.
An overruling Providence, in the person of an all-wise
and all-powerful God, the Maker and Preserver of all
things, had taken the place of that earlier belief, the
creation at once of the philosophic intellect, as well as
of the popular instinct. Subordinate to this general
conception, there had been a dim sense that man’s
actions and social development depended on fixed laws,
traceable by observation, and capable of giving a cer
tain measure of guidance. A combination of these two
ideas had led men to frame schemes on which they
could arrange the events of history, and the sequence
of human revolutions. Boldly rejecting the first part
of the combination, others had gone so far as to look
for the solution of all such questions simply in man’s
�10
circumstances, and nature, and history. Strong in the
results of a limited and one-sided observation, they had
trusted to their instinct, and proclaimed that progress
was the law which humanity obeyed—progress ever
onwards in a direct line, with an indefinite horizon
before them of perfectibility, encouraging the most
magnificent, must we not also add, the most visionary
hopes—hopes, however, valuable even in their wildness,
as testifying to the instinct which had induced their
formation. That instinct, we may truly say, had never
been wanting; we may trace it in the earliest periods
of our race, in the creations of the poet, in the con
ceptions of the philosopher, in the anticipations of the
prophet. The old language is true. The earnest ex
pectation of the creature waited for the manifestation;
the whole creation groaned and travailed in pain until
now.
Such was the state of things, such the materials
prepared, at the time when Comte’s powers were suf
ficiently matured to form a judgment on them, and on
the use to which they might be put; such I may add
was the instinct of man, such the great want to be
satisfied. The old interpretations of nature, and of
human government, and social organization had failed.
Was a new interpretation possible? Such was the
problem to be solved.
We say with confidence, and with gratitude; It has
been solved. The interpretation has been given.
Reading afresh the writing which had lain before the
gaze of statesmen and philosophers, by the help of aids
which they had not had, Auguste Comte was enabled
to give an interpretation which they had missed from
the want of these aids. He saw that in one depart
ment there had been unbroken progress, whilst in all
others there had been interchange of growth and decay.
�11
He saw that in regard to that outer world, which is the
theatre of man’s actions, a certain method had been allpowerful to reduce it more and more within the range
of man’s knowledge and consequent power of dealing
with it for his own purposes. That method had been
the recognition of invariable laws, which we could learn
by observation, and turn to useful account by obedience.
Two branches only, of all that were accessible to man,
remained exempt from the application of this method—
the social and the moral. Once show that they could
be brought within its range, and the philosophical
problem was solved. The intellect was enabled to
move evenly over all the field of human knowledge,
without any abrupt separation of its parts. This Comte
is acknowledged by competent judges to have shown.
Social and moral laws being demonstrated, it re
mained to apply them to practice. The philosophical
study of human nature must find its expression, its
application in practical politics. So alone could the
truth and utility of its results be tested. But here his
work undergoes a change. Its character is raised,
might I say transfigured. The powerful philosophical
elaboration becomes a creation. The treatise on the
principles of government and morals passes into the
constitution of a living church. The teacher and phi
losopher stands before us as the apostle and the priest.
He had long worked alone, and under the most ad
verse outward circumstances. His intellect had been
severely tasked, his affections repressed, his character
exposed to all hardening influences, his daily life em
bittered by constant domestic annoyances. He had
borne up against all during seventeen years, in the faith
that the truths he had to discover and reveal would be
of real social value. He had laboured to fix on a firm
basis the great discovery of his earlier life, the law of
B
�12
social development, the law of the three states of all
our conceptions, holding good equally for the race and
for the individual. With this object he had gone
through the whole range of abstract thought, whether
as applied to the outer world or to man. In this work
he had found his refuge, in this work and in the spirit
of love in which he had undertaken and continued it.
Hence his great endurance, which had been tried at
times even too severely. His life had been a constant
act of devotion to the power he served. Outwardly
impassive, the fire had burned more strongly within,
and the afiection which could find no worthy individual
object had been concentrated on a collective one. As
he studied the movement of the human race in its
history, we cannot doubt that half unconsciously his
sympathy had grown more lively, his conviction of a
brighter future more intense. This was but the natural
result of such work as his. Every artist loves his work,
and as Comte worked out into fuller light, the concep
tions of the past stages of man’s existence, those con
ceptions became, though under a strictly scientific garb,
what his poem is to the poet. And all his conceptions
and studies tended one way, to raise him out of himself,
and to make him lose himself in his race. In silence,
then, I conceive a great work had been going on; he
had been preparing for a new existence. At the end
of his philosophical elaboration, he rested before entering
on the subsequent construction for which that had been
but the basis. It was in this interval of rest that he
became acquainted with Madame de Vaux. His inter
course with her was short, one year saw its beginning
and end. His intercourse, I mean, in the ordinary
sense of the word. In the truest sense it ended only
with his death, eleven years later. But that one year
was enough. The inner deep was broken up; the great
�13
springs of affection were opened; the long pent-up
nature revealed itself, and as on the high mountain
tract, what was but yesterday snow, was to-day the
grass and the flower. His endurance and faith had
met a reward. For him, too, there was a possibility
of individual sympathy and affection, and the love of
the race might be quickened by the genuine human
love of a noble woman. I have heard it said, that for
the truest tenderness you require great strength, and
the language is certainly so far correct, that where a
strong nature does not harden, but suffers itself to
develope its tenderness, there this latter quality will
master the man in a way which poorer natures find it
hard to conceive. Be this as it may, it is clear that his
love for Madame de Vaux revealed him to himself,
placed his being and his work consequently in a new
light before him, at the same time that it gratified the
want of personal sympathy under which he had nearly
sunk.
In the vivid sense of blessedness which this change
brought with it, in the enjoyment of this individual
love, I again say it with the full consciousness of what
I am saying, he was transfigured His true nature was
shown forth, the warmth of his sympathies became
evident, his character was softened, yet lost none of its
force; his genius became clearer under the impulse of
his heart. He trusted himself more fully, and gave
himself a more complete expression. In the highest
sense of the term, as well as in its more limited and
more ordinary sense, he became purified. He had him
self drunk at the true spring of human happiness, which
is love, and he had been prepared for its effects by his
self-sacrifice. He was enabled to see that for others,
too, for all men, there was no other source to which
they could go but to this, where the laws of happiness
and duty are fused into one.
�14
He stood revealed to himself, and his work also stood
in a new light before him. The unity of the human
race, over whose progress he had pondered, had long
been a conviction with him With the conception, too,
of Humanity, as a higher organism he had familiarized
himself, and by the light of that conception had inter
preted its past and meditated on its future Neither in
this respect any more than with regard to his own
moral nature was there any abrupt change. The phi
losophical character had been predominant; it gave
way to the human. The conviction became faith ; the
organism in which he had believed claimed and received
his veneration and his love, in other words, his worship.
So I read his progress.
We who share that faith, that veneration, and that
love; we who would worship as he worshipped; we
who would preach by our lives, and, where possible,
by our spoken or written words, that great Being whose
existence is now revealed; that Being of whom all the
earlier divinities which man has created as the guardians
of his childhood and early youth are but anticipations,
we can appreciate the greatness of the change which
his labour has effected. We can see, and each in his
several measure can proclaim to others, that what was
but a dim instinct, has become a truth, in the power of
which we can meet all difficulties; that where there
was inquiry, now there is knowledge; where there was
anxious searching, now there is possession; that un
certainty has given way to confidence, despondency to
courage. We see families forming into tribes, and
tribes into cities or states, and states into still larger
unions. And distinct from all such unions we see,
besides, different races co-existent, distrustful, or
hostile. We feel that the ascending series is not com
plete ; that as the family in the earliest state is at war
�15
with other families, the tribe at war with other tribes,
so the nations and races are at variance with each other;
and that as the remedy in each previous case has been
the fusion of the smaller into the larger organism, so it
must be still the same if the process is to be completed,
and that no more than the single family or the isolated
tribe can the greatest nation or the most powerful race
stand wholesomely alone. All must bend, all must
acknowledge a common superior, a higher organism,
detached from which they lose themselves and their
true nature, become selfish and degraded. Still higher
organisms there may be; we know not. If there be,
we know that we cannot neglect the one we know, nor
refuse to avail ourselves of the aid which it can give us
when once acknowledged and accepted.
We accept it then, and believe in it. We see the
benefits Humanity has reaped for us by her toilsome
and suffering past; we feel that we are her children,
that we owe her all; and seeing and feeling this, we
love, adore, and serve. For we see in her no mere
idea of the intellect, but a living organism, of which
we all are parts, and from which we cannot conceive
ourselves cut off, the highest organism within the range
of our knowledge. The family has ever been allowed
to be real; the state has ever been allowed to be real;
St. Paul felt, and since him, in all ages, Christians
have felt that the Church is real. We claim no less
for Humanity; we feel no less that Humanity is real,
requiring the same love, the same service, the same
devotion. We see the General Assembly and Church
of the first-born, the faithful who in all ages have
served, not themselves, but their race. We would be
joined to them ourselves. We see with Isaiah, in the
visions of the future, all nations coming to join us and
them. The great apostle saw the Christian Church in
�16
its glory, without spot or wrinkle. We throw open
wider than he could the portals of the Church to which
we belong—the Church of Humanity. The world to
him lay in wickedness, and was given over to the service
of devils. We can trace the good underlying the evil
—can sympathize with our fellow-men in all their
phases of existence ; and where he saw devils, we can
see creations of as much validity as his own God; and,
as I have said already, in his and their objects of worship
we find anticipations of our own. True, St. Paul spoke
of there being neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor
uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free;
but Christ being all and in all. And the language
testifies to the largeness of his love, and the grandeur
of his intellectual conception. But for the union to
which he aspired a condition is implied which could not
be fulfilled for the time which preceded him, and has
not been fulfilled since his time; which, we may safely
say, never will be fulfilled. Christendom is not Chris
tian, nor becoming Christian. How should it convey to
others that which it does not believe in and live by
itself? How should it convert Heathendom ? We are
limited by no such condition. We cannot restrict our
admission. The very idea of Humanity forbids any
such exclusion. In one way or other she admits all
human beings within her pale. Nay she goes further,
and recognises the services of the animal races that
promote her welfare. Nor is this the limit of her
power. She may borrow Shelley’s words, and say—
I am the eye with which the universe
Beholds itself and knows itself divine;
All harmony of instrument or verse,
All phrophecv, all medicine are mine,
All light of art or nature ;—to my song
Victory and praise in their own right belong.
�In the exercise of her power she proceeds to com
plete herself by two great creations.
As we contemplate man’s action and existence, we
are led to think of the sphere in which they take place,
and of the invariable laws under which they are de
veloped. We rest not, then, in any narrow or exclusive
spirit in Humanity, but we pass to the earth, our
common mother, as the general language of man—the
correct index to the universal feeling—has ever delighted
to call her; and from the earth we rise to the system
of which she is a part. We look back on the distant
ages when the Earth was preparing herself for the
habitation of man, and with gratitude and love we
acknowledge her past and present services. With the
same feelings, though with less* intensity, we regard
the heavenly bodies, which in a greater or less degree
influence this abode of man—the Sun, the Moon,, and
the Earth’s fellow-planets; the World, in short, in the
real sense in which we use the term. The stars in
their brightness, the hosts of heaven are a sight of
beauty, but beyond that (I speak broadly, not unaware
that the statement requires a certain limitation
scientifically), they offer us nothing. And in the spirit
of self-discipline we accept their beauty gratefully, but
we seek not to penetrate further, for we recognise the
limits of our powers, and we can afford no waste of
them.
The invariable laws under which Humanity is placed
have received various names at different periods.
Destiny, Fate, Necessity, the Heaven, Providence, all
are so many names of one and the same conception :
the laws which man feels himself under, and that
without the power of escaping from them. We claim
no exemption from the common lot. We only wish to
draw out into consciousness the instinctive acceptance
�18
of the race, and to modify the spirit in which we regard
them. We accept; so have all men. We obey; so
have all men. We venerate; so have some in past
ages or in other countries. We add but one other
term—we love. We would perfect our submission,
and so reap the full benefits of submission in the im
provement of our hearts and tempers. We take in
conception the sum of the conditions of existence, and
we give them an ideal being and a definite home in
Space, the second great creation which completes the
central one of Humanity. In the bosom of Space we
place the World; and we conceive of the World and
this our mother Earth as gladly welcomed to that
bosom with the simplest and purest love, and we give
our love in return.
Thou art folded, thou art lying
In the light which is undying.
Thus we complete the Trinity of our religion,
Humanity, the World, and Space. So completed, we
recognise its power to give unity and definiteness to
our thoughts, purity and warmth to our affections,
scope and vigour to our activity. We recognise its
power to regulate our whole being; to give us that
which it has so long been the aim of all religions to
give—internal union. We recognise its power to raise
us above ourselves, and by intensifying the action of
our unselfish instincts, to bear down into their due sub
ordination our selfish ones. We see in it yet un
worked treasures. We count not ourselves to have
apprehended, but we press forward to the prize of our
high calling. But even now, whilst its full capabilities
are unknown to us, before we have apprehended, we
find enough in it to guide and strengthen us. It har
monizes us within ourselves by the strong force of love,
�19
and it binds us to our fellow-men by the same power.
It awakens and quickens our sympathy with the past,
uniting us with the generations that are gone by firmer
ties than have ever been imagined hitherto. It teaches
us to live in the interest and for the good of the gene
rations that are to follow in the long succession of
years. It teaches us that for our action in our own
generation we must live in dutiful submission to the
lessons of the past, to the voice of the dead, and at the
same time we must evoke the future by the power of
imagination, and endeavour so to shape our action that
it may conduce to the advantage of that future.
Such are the general principles, by the light of which
the institutions of our nascent church and social or
ganization have been sketched by its Founder. A
detailed notice of these institutions I avoid at present.
Enough if in brief I state some of their leading points.
On the basis of the Family, the primary and indestruc
tible element of all human society, we raise the Country
or the State, and the Church, as the three social forms
which can never be dispensed with, which admit neither
of diminution nor of increase when the human organism
is rightly constituted. Marriage indissoluble even by
death; the parental and filial relation strengthened by
an education which shall not neglect the intellect, but
which shall never forget its essential subordination as
the minister of the affections and the guide of action;
which shall therefore recognise the mother’s influence
as predominant during childhood, and shall direct all
its efforts to preserve it and strengthen it during youth
and early manhood,—Women freed from all hard labour;
freed from the necessity of leaving their homes, and
maintained by the labour of man; honoured as the
highest influence in domestic and public life, as the
purest representatives of humanity;—a Priesthood,
�20
which as every other great priesthood has been, shall
be the depositary of all the intellectual accumulations
of the race, and which shall, with perfect gratuitousness,
freely give out from that store to all equally, without
distinction of sex or of rank; a priesthood which shall
bring to the performance of its high duties devotion
and zeal such as we honour in the better members of
other priesthoods, whilst it shall give guarantees which
have never been as a whole exacted from them; which
shall renounce all temporal power and all property, all
tendency to isolation of interests and distinctness of
position as given by celibacy, whilst it brings a long
novitiate and ripe age to insure so far as may be its
intellectual and moral competence; a priesthood which,
as the fountain of education, and the dispenser of
knowledge—(a knowledge, be it remembered, accessi
ble to all, and consequently guarded against any
undue concentration or abuse,)—shall reject all claims
to mysterious power, and stand on the right and noble
performance of its educational functions, but which, on
that firm basis shall speak to all classes and on all
questions with freedom and sincerity, thus exercising a
great consultative influence over those whom it has
educated; a priesthood, finally, to which all orders and
degrees of man shall look for their sanction and con
secration whilst living, for the judgment on their life
after death, that consecration to be given, that judg
ment to be pronounced, by virtue of a common faith
and common principles of action.—Capital and labour
both honoured, both recognised as essential; the
capitalist looked on as wielding the most indispensable
of material functions in the accumulation and trans
mission of wealth; as the comptroller and dispenser of
the treasures which the industry of man has brought
into existence by its long efforts, but never suffered to
�21
forget that he is the steward of society, the depositary
of a trust to he used for no selfish ends; the workman
released from his now brutalizing toil-released .to an
extent which as yet it would be thought wild to dream
of—taught to estimate aright and acquiesce in his po
sition; taught at the same time to modify it so far as
is compatible with such acquiescence; accepting labour
not as a curse but as a blessing; only asking that the
treasures of affection and of art and of thought shall
be opened to him largely and freely, so that he, too,
may feel and enjoy his human nature; finding therefore
in the rich enjoyment of the family life, in the powers
conferred on him by education, in the consciousness of
his freedom from their responsibilities a compensation
for the absence of power and wealth; yet feeling at the
same time that by the sympathy of the priesthood and
that of his fellow-workmen there is placed in his hands
a strong power to moderate the action of the other
social forces from which he at present suffers so
grievously.-^ Such are the points to which my present
limits confine me, but they may be enough to give in a
measure the conception of society such as we view it
from the vantage ground of Humanity. I would add
that such a form of society looks to no law or despotic
agencies to establish it or to maintain it. It must rest
on a purely spiritual basis, on the free convictions of
those who form it, such convictions to result from a
common education. On no point are the statements of
our founder clearer; on no point are they so little un
derstood. The degree to which they are misunderstood
or misrepresented is scarcely conceivable by any one
who has honestly read his works.
I have stated the problem which Comte found un
solved. I have stated the personal conditions under
which he solved it. I have stated very briefly the
�22
solution he has given. I turn to the consideration of
ourselves who accept that solution and its fullest con
sequences, who are to begin to reap where he has
sown.
It is true we are but a small body; it is true we are
but pioneers of the future; that we can never hope to
see the organization of that future otherwise, speaking
generally, than as he saw it, as an ideal. Yet by
virtue of his labours and of his creations we have en
tered into our inheritance. We are of age—we claim
the full possession of that which is ours. 1 feel that
we must work mainly for the future, but I do not
therefore feel that we need renounce any part of that
which the past has bequeathed to us. We have the
consciousness of being the children and the servants of
Humanity. We would use in her service all the ma
terials with which she endows us. We would enjoy
as her children all the property she has stored up for
us. Her existence is one and continuous—a constant
struggle to raise herself and increase her possessions;
to adapt herself to her home and her home to herself;
and whilst we would add in our turn, we feel that we
may freely enjoy the results already attained. Our
inheritance consists of the great actions that have been
done, the great words that have been spoken, the great
creations of art in all its forms. Religion, philosophy,
art, science, industry, all are put under contribution.
So, too, are the various social organizations which men
have formed, and in which they have embodied their
conceptions of order, of law, and government. We
are made free of Humanity, and we pass upwards or
downwards in her course by the power of sympathy.
Nor does our freedom stand us in less stead with re
ference to the problems of the present day, and the
co-existent branches of the great human family. Our
�23
sympathy is in this case limited only by the imperfec
tion of our knowledge. It will increase as our know
ledge increases. We are sure that the faith by which
we live is sufficient for all our requirements. It has
been felt that Catholicism, and still more Protestantism,
stand in a difficult relation to the arts and civilizations
that preceded them, as also to those which exist at the
same time with them, though distinct from them.
The difficulty has been variously met, but never quite
got rid of. We feel no such difficulty. In the unity
of Humanity we set ourselves clear of it. All previous,
all co-existent civilizations are different in form only.
We accept all as useful and true in relation to the
wants of those who lived or who live under them. We
seek to understand and sympathize, not to regret or
condemn. We can admit no break. Nay more, we
seek to trace out the ideas and feelings which men
have clothed so variously, that we may incorporate
them so far as we can, for our faith is not new in its
elements, but new in its combination of those elements.
With the simple worshipper of the Fetich period, we
endow the world without us with will and feeling; we
do not treat all the beautiful forms around us as inert
matter, we only refuse them intelligence. But whereas
he rested in that belief as sufficient, and assumed that
it was an adequate account of the external world, we
consciously adopt it, and after the labour of the scien
tific intellect is complete we turn from it and borrow
the eye of the poet. With the later worshipper of the
gods of Polytheism we can also sympathize, and recog
nise the services of his graceful faith, as the poets of
our western civilization have ever done. The severe
conception of the Jewish legislator or the Arabian
prophet, their pure monotheism finds no stinted ad
miration from us, any more than the modification of
�the former aimed at by early Christianity, or the half
polytheistic system of Catholicism. The framework of
polity which all the religious lawgivers have constructed
on their religion is made to conduce to our teaching.
And we so treat all the past, so seek to combine it,
not as a mere intellectual question,—for the pleasure
of contemplation,—glorying in “ the wide thought and
the vast hope,” as a species of personal distinction and
acquisition. Rather would we share the simplest and
the lowest of previous faiths than thus dwell alone in
our palace of art, however richly adorned with all forms
of beauty, replete with all high associations. No, we
seek to sympathize with all, to understand all, to em
brace all, in order that we may serve more usefully.
The real and the useful, such are the tests to which we
bring alike philosophical conceptions and poetic visions,
—such is the basis on which we build. Men amongst
our fellow-men, we raise our palace towers on the broad
foundations of our common humanity.
Resting on this cordial sympathy with the past, on
this dutiful submission to the influence of the dead, we
feel no difficulty when we try to penetrate and call up
before us the future. Experience teaches us no distrust.
On the contrary, it inspires us with full confidence.
We are sure that what has been an unbroken progress
shall contiue to be so, and with this conviction borne
in upon us, on the most rational grounds, we cast aside
all hesitation. The imagination of the poet, the vision
of the prophet, we use them both. And within the
limits of man’s condition soberly estimated, there is no
good of which we do not see the certain fruition. We
see wars cease and jarring interests reconciled by virtue
of the convergent tendency which we verify in the past
history of our race, and not by any fanciful anticipation.
We see the human race, conscious of its destination,
�25
advancing towards a more complete mastery over itself,
its energies, and its circumstances. We see the
numerous evils to which we are liable met with more
skill where skill is available, with greater resignation
where resignation is necessary. We see many of those
evils disappear as the natural result of the greater unity
of the whole man, which the Religion of Humanity en
sures. The forms of European disease are unknown,
many of them, to the simple Fetichists of Africa. It
seems no mere dream to suppose that the return of
mental harmony to the distracted populations, whether
of Europe, Asia, or America, may have a like result.
The past civilizations have seen the arts cultivated, and
productive of fruits which are the heirloom of the race.
The civilization of the future, we doubt it not, shall see
the same effect on a grander scale, in proportion as the
basis on which it rests shall be firmer, and men’s sense
of possession stronger. True, that for the present the
new faith exists but in outline, and appears but meagre
in this point of view, when put side by side with its
predecessors, Polytheism or Catholicism. This is its
necessary condition at its birth. But whilst it adopts,
nay, claims as its own the productions of its rivals, it
will in due time match them and complete them Till
it does so we enjoy what others enjoy with a better
title than theirs, and a more inspiriting hope.
For the present in which our lot is cast, its considera
tion is less cheering. We need the strength derived
from the other two, and the steadiness of conviction
which our view of them is calculated to give. We need,
I hesitate not to say it, to live as little as we can in the
present, as much as we can in the past and future.
Still we must live and act, and whilst I allow the gloomy
character of the present, I feel that our faith can meet it
and master it. The more we rise above it, the clearer
�26
will be our view of its wants and of our own conduct.
We know that, wander and revolt as it may, no gene
ration or succession of generations can withdraw itself
from the operation of the fixed laws of our nature. It
may not be for us to see how the existing condition of
things is leading on to the future of which we are so
confident; yet we may be sure that it is so leading, and
by an attentive study we shall discern the how. We
must not be led astray by the noise and hurry around
us, but watch what has preceded us, and be sure that
in silence influences are at work which will set matters
right. We are freed from all nervous excitement and
impatience by this conviction; at the same time I can
trace in it no tendency to enfeeble our action. Our
great object must be to get a clear conception of the
nature and limits of our intervention if it is to be useful,
so as to avoid waste of efforts. There is scarcely any
feature of the present time in England which is more
discouraging than the waste we see going on owing to
the want of such a conception and the misunderstanding
of the social problems. We can avoid this, and yet
find abundant scope for our activity. For whilst we
acknowledge the evils and imperfections that exist,
and would sound to their very depths the social wants,
we avail ourselves to the full also of all remedies that
offer, nay, even largely of palliatives; and we feel the
real interest which society, however disorganized, can
never lose. This follows, of course, from our view of
life. This earth is to us our home, its actual inhabi
tants those whom we are to help, and by whom we
are to be helped more immediately. We feel that, if
accepted, our faith can largely minister to the good of
mankind. We acquiesce in no desparing abandonment
of our position. We acquiesce not in the general
sauve qui pent cry which I hear loudly preached from
�27
the Christian pulpits. We would stand ourselves and
gather others round us, turning the rout into resistance,
and resistance into victory. We call on others to do
the same, or to confess that they cannot, and as
confessing that, to stand aside whilst we act, guide,
and govern.
It will, I hope, be seen from this language, that
when I say we ought to live mainly in the past and in
the future, I speak in no spirit of quietism, or from
any wish to shirk the questions and difficulties and
duties of the present. If we are to clear ourselves of
the present, it is in order that we may serve it better,
and gain strength for that service. In another form
the language would be accepted by all religious minds.
The acts of devotion, prayer, meditation, the Christian
sacrament of the Mass or the Lord’s Supper, what are
they but communion with the invisible—the not
present? and what is one great object of them but to
enable those who are most careful in performing them
to act the better on the visible—the present? We
differ not in principle if we modify and enlarge the
form. We, too, would live in faith or communion
with that which is not seen, whether that communion
take the shape of commemoration of benefits received,
or of imagination of the future blessings to be conferred
by Humanity. As a necessary link in the great chain
of these blessings we would exert ourselves with all
vigour.
Thus imperfectly I have touched on the main points
of our position considered in relation to our direct
action. But we can nope of us forget that we are in
the midst of opponents, and that our bearing towards
them is of the greatest practical importance. We
cannot hope to escape the fate of all who have broken
off from received opinions and the traditional faith of
�28
their time or country. In vain we urge that ours is a
■continuation, a development of the past. It is antago
nistic to the present; that is undeniable and enough.
Nor however much we may wish to strip our faith of
any aggressive character, can we prevent its being in
competition with existing forms of religious belief.
Opposition then we must meet, and considerable
hostility; and though I cannot wish even not to have
the former, nor hope to conciliate the latter, still I
would do what lies in me to make our own attitude as
inoffensive as possible, and to attract the sympathy of
the better amongst our opponents.
In their ranks, and with the same general professions,
are to be met men as widely apart in feeling as is con
ceivable. With some few I know the sympathy I offer
will not be rejected, that which I court not be denied
me. I feel also that there are many on whose strongest
opposition I count who will not lose all kindly feeling.
With such I would wish the contest to be of a very
simple character. I would say to them—We differ as
to means, but in a large degree our end is the same;
we would serve our fellow-men, so would you. Where
there is misery, or ignorance, or vice, there we both
would try our remedies. We, the servants of Human
ity, accept and honour your efforts as the servants of
Christ; the more truly you .serve him, the more
thoroughly you mould yourselves into his image, the
more keen will be our sympathy and admiration. I
speak as one who was once a Protestant to those who
are still Protestants. We have in no way lost our
sympathy with the church of our fathers, with the
faith taught us in infancy, which guided us in youth
and early manhood. Our memory is stored with all
holy and gentle associations; we can yet appreciate
the attractions of Protestantism, we yet dwell with
�pleasure on its greater names, on the devotion which
it has inspired, and still inspires, on the great influence
for good which it can yet exercise. We can look on
you as unconscious servants of Humanity. We are
glad that you should look on us, as I know some have
done, as unconscious servants of Christ.
Again, if you are, either by birth or by change,
members of the Catholic Church, our language need
not essentially alter, whilst in one respect our sympathy
is quickened. For of all the steps by which the race
has advanced, on none do we linger with more respect
ful and enthusiastic admiration than on mediaeval
Catholicism, on the church of the Gregorys, the
Innocents, the Bernards. None of the transitional
forms of spiritual organization has conferred greater
services on Humanity. We study the traditions of
your Papacy, and we seek to adopt them into our
system. To Catholicism we owe the distinction between
the spiritual and temporal power, the great cardinal
principle of all right social organization. To Catho
licism, in combination with Feudalism, we owe the
worship of the Virgin, in which creation we find a
more perfect anticipation of our Divine Humanity than
in the God-Man of early and northern Christianity.
Our debt is deep to your Church, and we freely admit
it.
Or take another and not uncommon case, and suppose
that the opponents, such as I am dealing with, have
wandered from all the paths which have hitherto been
accepted, but feel it impossible to acquiesce in the new
one we offer. Again we have no difficulty. We have
many of us been in the same condition—we have passed
through a stage of negation, and can sympathize with
those who remain in it. Your efforts to attain some
thing more satisfactory are such as ours were; your
labour to do good in your generation in spite of your
�30
negative state is inspired by the same spirit which we
wished to direct our own. To all such, whether Pro
testant or Catholic, or neither, we can say indifferently
—Let the only question be which shall work most
efficiently in the cause which he considers the right one.
You may not accept our aid, we will give it unaccepted
and unsought. As your dangers thicken round you, you
may adopt a different spirit, and welcome those whom
you now reject. Come when it may, we shall be ready
to meet such a change. Even now we would organize
a league between all who feel the evils of our time, its
social anarchy, its religious negation. If you say you
cannot join us, that to you our remedy is a worse evil
than the actual state, we shall none the less feel that
there is such a league, though its existence be unrecog
nised by you; and we shall be glad when you are
ready on your side to recognise it. It were well if
that time were come.
With the large mass of our opponents those whom I
have been addressing have almost as little in common
as they have with us. Nominally they have the same
cause, but their spirit is widely different. They
profess the same belief, but with the one it is the
guiding principle of their lives, on the other it has no
visible effects. Here will be the worst hostility. We
cannot hope to disarm it. Suspicion, reproach, cold
friendship, and zealous enmity—such was the treat
ment Arnold taught us to expect whilst Christian, and
his teaching was the legitimate result of his experience.
We can hardly drink a more bitter cup than he drank.
We may count even more surely on the same in our
new faith. We can only submit in patience, calling on
our adversaries to make it clear by their conduct that
they really value the faith which they profess. We
can urge on them to act up to it, or not to attack us if
they do not. But at the best we must bear their en-
�•31
mity as we may; the less easily as we feel that those
who show it have no warrant either intellectual or
moral.
Generally with regard to all opponents of whatever
creed and whatever conduct, our attitude must be
respectful and patient. And widening our view so as
to take in all who are not with us, we must seek to act
on them in as sympathetic a spirit as possible.
Inflexible in principle, conciliating in action—such is
our rule, as we know. But few will join us at
present. Yet we are in contact with many. Whilst
firmly asserting our own faith and rules of practice,
and heartily trying to make our life accordant with
them, we may treat all others around us, be their faith
or practice what it may, with respect; they are men
with human sympathies and under strong temptations,
and with but slight aids to withstand them. Let ns
seek, then, to take them at the point we find them,
understand that, and without impatience try to urge
them on from that point, not too abruptly severing
them from their past. Where they express a want for
what we can offer, there we freely offer it; where they
do not, let us act on their present condition as we best
may, here a little and there a little. Our business is,
in fact, to convert where we can, but to serve all,
whether they join us or no. And this the character of
our faith enables us to do without any compromise or
duplicity.
For myself, I have been met, as a general rule, in a
spirit which I can hardly think generous, even when I
have not been attacked with personal abuse. I can
promise my assailants that I will never fight them with
their own weapons. I can promise them that no at
tack shall ever draw from me a direct answer, but
that each one, when worth considering, shall lead me
more carefully to examine my own position, and to
�32*
endeavour to set it forth more clearly and convincingly
to others. Each attack shall, in fact, he a stimulus tb
renewed exertion, so long as I am capable of exertion.
When I believed and preached the faith of Christ, I
gave no reluctant or timid service. This I may confi
dently say. When later I doubted that faith, yet had
accepted no other, when, therefore, whatever work I
could do could be done only in the general faith that
what was good, and true, and beautiful would ulti
mately be clear, I say with equal confidence that
whilst I regret many things I said and did, yet my
service was in spirit at least not grudgingly given, that
where I saw my way I spoke and acted uncompromi
singly. In the new period of my life on which I have
entered, and so long as it shall last; in the new reli
gion which I preach with the most cordial assent and
the fullest satisfaction—satisfaction for whatever ener
gies, or intellect, or feelings are left me—I feel that
my service will be only different in form, the same in
spirit. As I look back on my work, and such writings
as I have published, I cannot but think that my adver
saries have been mistaken in their tactics, that a less
personal warfare wuuld have been wiser. To that I
now invite them. The contest will, I foresee, be hot
enough. So long as men are merely negative they are
tolerated, or meet with secret sympathy; but when
the work of reconstruction begins, when we offer
something positive as a basis, the character of the
struggle changes, and it will be war to the knife. I
shrink not from such war, but it is the interest of all
parties to strip it as far as is practicable of its evil
features. In the cause to which I have devoted my
self I would fight with all possible courtesy.
Thoughts crowd in on me on an occasion like the
present. I cannot express all. I have endeavoured
to give a general idea of our faith, its origin, its foun-
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der, the position of its disciples in England, viewed in
itself and in reference to their opponents. Other
subjects must be reserved for other similar occasions,
or for utterance in other ways. I would end to-day by
a return to the point from which I set out. I would
return to him whose birth we commemorate; to him
and to her whose love he so highly valued, to whose
influence he attributed such a powerful modification of
his work. Each separate part of this discourse should
but make us feel more profound gratitude for the joint
services of these great benefactors of their race; gra
titude to him who set forth Humanity to man, grati
tude to her who supported him by her affection, and,
as I said above, revealed him to himself. As time
passes their names shall brighten; we can but antici
pate by imagination the benefits of their services to
our posterity, and the fulness of its gratitude. In the
present sense of the benefits gained, in the enjoyment
of the regeneration of which we see but the faint be
ginnings, that posterity will seek and find an adequate
expression for that gratitude. At the close of the long
preparation of our race, at the commencement of the
new era, surrounded by the great who preceded them,
and who shall have followed them, in high pre-eminence
will stand the pair from whom we date the foundation
of bur religion—Clotilde de Vaux and Auguste Comte.
Nor may we separate those whom he has associated—
the two who with Madame de Vaux are commemorated
on the tomb in which for a time he rests—his mother,
and his adopted daughter. The first we know but
through him, but his grateful and reverent remembrance
is sufficient to ensure our honour. The second some
of us are privileged to know, and are enabled to appre
ciate the singular beauty of her lofty yet self-denying
and humble love to him, and not to him only, but to
wards all who share his faith.
�>
’4
In conclusion, I turn from her chosen servants and
organs to Humanity, the power whom we serve, in
whosp name we are met to-day. We repeat our ac
knowledgment that we owe to her whatever we are;
we repeat our resolution to consecrate to her cause all
our powers. This is our reasonable service, and in the
discharge of it we have great encouragement. We
pray that we may not be found wanting, each in his
several station—each according to his opportunities
soundly estimated. We pray that we may feel the
influence of the holy faith we preach; that we may be
led by it to all good in thought, word, and deed; that
we may discipline ourselves—our heart, our intellect,
our character—not suffering ourselves to commit the
common error, and neglect ourselves and our own
change into good whilst we are endeavouring to reform
others; but fully sensible that efforts upon others are
but hypocrisy unless accompanied by constant efforts
on ourselves. So may we grow purer, and gentler,
and more loving, at the same time that we grow wiser,
and firmer, and more enduring. So shall we modify,
even where we do not win.
. In communion with the illustrious dead, and still
more living communion with those whom we have
ourselves known and loved, in sympathy with all men
and the world without us, in loving obedience and re
signation to the laws of our own nature and of that
outer world, in loving acceptance of our destiny, we
may feel, and think, and act, we may find peace our
selves and do useful service to others.
May the blessing of Humanity be with you all.
THE END.
��
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Victorian Blogging
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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The new religion in its attitude towards the old. A sermon preached at South Fields, Wandsworth, Wednesday, 19th Moses 71 [19th January, 1859], on the anniversary of the birth of Auguste Comte, 19th January 1798.
Creator
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Congreve, Richard [1818-1899]
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Place of publication: London
Collation: 34 p. ; 10 cm.
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W. Polley
Date
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1859
Identifier
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G3370
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<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (</span>The new religion in its attitude towards the old. A sermon preached at South Fields, Wandsworth, Wednesday, 19th Moses 71 [19th January, 1859], on the anniversary of the birth of Auguste Comte, 19th January 1798.<span>), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/admin/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
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application/pdf
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Text
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English
Subject
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Religion
Auguste Comte
Religion