Chapter XXIV: Conclusion: The Religion of Humanity (4)

Sincere believers in Christianity will soon cease to interfere with the management of a world, where they profess themselves to be pilgrims and strangers. The new Supreme Being is no less jealous than the old, and will not accept the servants of two masters. But the truth is, that the more zealous theological partisans, whether royalists, or aristocrats, or democrats, have now for a long time been insincere. God to them is but the nominal chief of a hypocritical conspiracy, a conspiracy which is even more contemptible than it is odious. Their object is to keep the people from all great social improvements by assuring them that they will find compensation for their miseries in an imaginary future life. The doctrine is already falling into discredit among the working classes everywhere throughout the West, especially in Paris. All theological tendencies, whether Catholic, Protestant, or Deist, really serve to prolong and aggravate our moral anarchy, because they hinder the diffusion of that social sympathy and breadth of view, without which we can never attain fixity of principle and regularity of life. Every subversive scheme now afloat has either originated in Monotheism or has received its sanction. Even Catholicism has lost its power of controlling revolutionary extravagance in some of its own most distinguished members.

It is for the sake of Order therefore, even more than of Progress, that we call on all those who desire to rise above their present disastrous state of oscillation in feeling and opinion, to make a distinct choice between Positivism and Theology. For there are now but two camps: the camp of reaction and anarchy, which acknowledges more or less distinctly the direction of God: the camp of construction and progress, which is wholly devoted to Humanity.

The Being upon whom all our thoughts are concentrated is one whose existence is undoubted. We recognize that existence not in the Present only, but in the Past, and even in the Future: and we find it always subject to one fundamental Law, by which we are enabled to conceive of it as a whole. Placing our highest happiness in universal Love, we live, as far as it is possible, for others; and this in public life as well as in private; for the two are closely linked together in our religion; a religion clothed in all the beauty of Art, and yet never inconsistent with Science. After having thus exercised our powers to the full, and having given a charm and sacredness to our temporary life, we shall at last be for ever incorporated into the Supreme Being, of whose life all noble natures are necessarily partakers. It is only through the workers of Humanity that we can feel the inward reality and inexpressible sweetness of this incorporation. It is unknown to those who being still involved in theological belief, have not been able to form a clear conception of the Future, and have never experienced the feeling of pure self-sacrifice.

THE END

Butler & Tanner, The Selwood Printing Works, Frome, and London.

FOOTNOTES

[1] The establishment of this great principle is the most important result of my _System of Positive Philosophy_. This work was published 1830-1842, with the title of _Course of Positive Philosophy_, because it was based upon a course of lectures delivered 1826-1829. But since that time I have always given it the more appropriate name of System. Should the work reach a second edition, the correction will be made formally: meanwhile, this will, I hope, remove all misconception on the subject.

[2] [Comte afterwards added a seventh science, Ethics, (see vol. ii of _System of Positive Polity_).]

[3] [See Cabanis, _Rapports du physique et du moral de l’homme_, V^e memoire, where he speaks of ‘_les restes de l’esprit de chevalerie, fruit ridicule de l’odieuse féodalité_.’]

[4] Philosophy--the _love_ of wisdom.

[5] [Written in 1848.]

[6] On reconsideration, Comte saw fit to withdraw this proposal. See _Positive Polity_, vol. iv, ch. 5, p. 351.

[7] [Clotilde de Vaux, see _Testament d’Auguste Comte_, p. 550].

[8] This law was introduced by Royer-Collard. It forbids discussion of the private affairs of public men.

[9] [_Testament d’Auguste Comte_, p. 556].

[10] [This story _Lucie_ is republished in Vol. i of _System of Positive Polity_.]

[11] Toute la suite des hommes, pendant le cours de tant de siècles, doit être considérée comme un même homme qui subsiste toujours et qui apprend continuellement.--Pascal, _Pensées_, Part I, Art. I. [The whole succession of men during the course of so many centuries should be considered as one Man ever living and constantly learning.]

[12] [See _The Positivist Calendar_, edited by H. G. Jones (W. Reeves, 1905).]

[13] [_Tableau Historique des progrès de l’Esprit Humain_, Paris, 1900.]

[14] [The Republic of 1848.]

[15] [This report was republished in _Revue Occidentale_, July 1889; see also an article and a document published by M. Pierre Laffitte in the same review in January, 1890.]

[16] [This committee was formed in 1903.]

[17] This report was republished in _Revue Occidentale_, September, 1885.

[18] The relative position here assigned to England and Germany is reversed in the fourth volume of the _Politique Positive_.

Transcriber’s Notes

Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a predominant preference was found in this book; otherwise they were not changed.

Simple typographical errors were corrected; occasional unbalanced quotation marks retained.

Ambiguous hyphens at the ends of lines were retained.

Page 320: “the creative process” was misprinted as “the creature process”; changed here.

Page 399: “one of its principal features” was misprinted as “principle”; changed here.

End of Project Gutenberg's A General View of Positivism, by Auguste Comte