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Augusts COMTE anil the Middle Agss. 
 
HUNTED BY < xk .. nx,,,,kmnv,k ,, 
 
Auguste COMTE 
 
 i 
 AND 
 
 THE MIDDLE AGES 
 
 A LECTURE 
 
 GIVEN BEFORE A PRIVATE CIRCLE 
 
 IN THE 
 
 CITY OF POZSONY 
 
 (PRESBOURG) 
 
 ON SATURDAY 24 GUTTEMBERG 97 
 
 (5 SEPTEMBER 1885) 
 
 HENRY EDGER, 
 
 Naturalized Citizen (English-born) of the United States of America. 
 
 Fais ce que dois advienne que pourra. 
 
 POZSONY : 
 
 PRINTED FOR THE AUTHOR AND PUBLISHED 
 
 BY ALL BOOKSELLERS. 
 
 AGENT FOR THE UNITED STATES: Dr. P. J. POPOFF, 
 
 1948 ATLANTIC AVENUE, BROOKLYN, NEW-YORK. 
 
 JiJU. ra.g-33.-ts reserved. 
 
A 
 
 *Y 
 
 *v 
 
<H / 
 
 Augusts COMTG and the Middle %s. 
 
 In undertaking, a year ago to-day, for the 
 second time, to give a lecture more or less public 
 in this City of Presbourg on the anniversary of 
 3 death of Auguste Comte ; the lecture being 
 an exposition of a certain phase of the colossal 
 work accomplished by this great Genius, I felt 
 it necessary to say a few words in explanation 
 of the attitude I presume to take in these Annual 
 Lectures. And if I feel it necessary to do the 
 same again to-day I may congratulate myself 
 that it is for the last time. I am hoping 
 to have ready for the press in the course of this 
 next year a short statement of the general 
 character of the Religion I profess that will 
 render unnecessary similar explanations on any 
 subsequent recurrence of this anniversary. 
 
 These Lectures, in fact, in no wise constitute 
 any religious propagande. In them I make no 
 
 Z? 
 
pretention to do any thing more than offer to 
 the intelligent curiosity of the cultivated classes 
 of this city accurate information on a subject 
 with which I happen to be familiar, but which, 
 while very little known among the public. 
 beginning to attract the attention of the Thinking 
 World all through Europe. (The necessity for 
 any such explanation, however, exists no doubt 
 only in my own feelings. Neither the Govern- 
 ment of the Country, nor the Clergy, nor the 
 Press, nor even the population or Authorit 
 of the City, can for a moment be imagined to 
 see any ground for concern, or an 
 any sort of notice, in an occurrence of 
 insignificant a char the giving of a 
 
 lecture in a private room. an audit : 
 
 convened by personal invitation, and compo 
 only of a handful of persons from among the 
 very exceptional part of the population thai 
 acquainted with the English language. But any 
 thing- resembling, prima 
 
 versy is so far from being a benefit to 
 population that it would seem to me a very 
 ungracious act, on the part o\ a foreigner, t«> d»» 
 any tiling to bring it about. Not that the noble 
 habits ot toleration which have tor centuri 
 
characterized so admirably the very sympathetic 
 people of this Country — sympathetic both in the 
 English and the French senses of the word — 
 are in the least likely to be at any time found 
 wanting. But it would be an ungrateful return 
 for the generous hospitality a stranger coming 
 hither is sure to experience, to put those noble 
 habits to the test by doing anything that could 
 resemble the introduction of the poisonous apple 
 of religious discord. 
 
 The doctrines of the wonderful Genius who 
 bore the name of Auguste COMTE, and who 
 like all geniuses of the very first order, was 
 naturally and inevitably misunderstood altogether 
 by his cotemporaries. especially in his own 
 country, do in fact ultimately result in religion, 
 in a Religious Dogma, that religious dogma being 
 nothing either more or less than the Synthesis of 
 Positive Science regarded as a one whole. On 
 the basis of this dogma will inevitably arise, 
 sooner or later, a Religion, complete in every 
 thing that practically constitutes religion: Wor- 
 ship, Consecration, moral and intellectual In- 
 struction, Culture and Discipline, social and in- 
 dividual Direction and Regulation, Consolation, 
 calming and fortifying under affliction and the 
 
— 4 — 
 
 inevitable injustice actually characterizing terres- 
 trial existence, with the Prophecy of a Better 
 Future. It would seem, therefore, at first sight, 
 as though lectures expository of the doctrines 
 of Comte, given, too, by one who is him- 
 self an ardent disciple, must necessarily constitute 
 a religious propagande, a propagande tending 
 to introduce a new religion, and with it just 
 that apple of discord alluded to. For certainly 
 no controversies in which men engage are more 
 apt to be bitter and envenomed than those be- 
 tween rival religious creeds; and nothing can 
 be more undesirable for any country, especially 
 one that is in actual enjoyment of religious po, 
 and tranquillity, than to have a war of rival 
 dogmas set up in its midst. But those who have 
 some little acquaintance with Positive Sciem 
 even in its lower grades only, mathematical, 
 physical or chemical, will understand, almost at 
 the first glance, even if it could be imagined 
 possible that real religion should ever be based 
 upon a dogma purely scientific, how utterly im- 
 possible it must be for a doctrine that is really 
 so, one that is purely scientific, to introduce 
 any such Avar of rival dogmas. For genuinely 
 positive science never has to spread itself and 
 
extend its constantly growing empire over the 
 human mind by popular discussion. Such dis- 
 cussion; indeed, is utterly contrary to its miture. 
 In proportion as reall3 r positive science is, in 
 fact ; spread among* the people ; the consciousness 
 of the radical incompetency of popular discussion 
 in the solution of serious questions is spread at 
 the same time; its incompetency; at all events, 
 in the solution of questions in which the inter- 
 vention of positive science is even conceivably 
 possible. Positive Science trusts for her propa- 
 gande solely and exclusively to -Experience 
 and serious Instruction; that is just why her 
 empire does in fact constantly go on growing 
 irresistibly. The inevitable result of the dissem- 
 ination of the Positive Doctrine is ; therefore; 
 exactly the opposite of that so justly to be de- 
 precated. Instead of tending to agitation it tends 
 irresistibly; wherever it is introduced; in exact 
 proportion to its extension; to social calm. It 
 tends irresistibly to bring into the most profound 
 discredit the whole of the pestilential business 
 of the political; social or religious agitator. 
 
 That which specially imposes on the Lec- 
 turer the duty of the present explanation is the 
 fact that; in completely private life ; in the cases 
 
— 6 — 
 
 wherein he has had the pleasure of making the 
 personal acquaintance of individuals among the 
 population of this city, he has been unable, as 
 must naturally be the case with any one possessed 
 of deep and fervent convictions, which have 
 proved the source of profoundest consolation, 
 hope and energy to himself, to avoid making 
 efforts to share with his acquaintances the hap- 
 piness he himself enjoys. Perhaps it were not 
 an unfounded boast to confess that his efforts 
 in this sphere have not been wholly without 
 success. But the Positive Religion of Humanity, 
 arising on the dogmatic foundation of the Scien- 
 tific Synthesis, imposes upon its adherents, not 
 only the duty of living for others, but also and 
 equally that of living in open day. Representing 
 Human Life as attaining its just dignity only 
 when the Individual freely and voluntarily con- 
 secrates his existence to the social service, it 
 insists upon the absence of all concealment 
 the only sufficient guarantee of the sincerity 
 and reality of the social consecration. All secret 
 intrigue, all underhand contrivance \ thing 
 
 that ever so little savors of plotting, it calls 
 upon its disciples to utterly eschew, even to 
 abhor; it insists upon their doing all that ti 
 
— 7 — 
 
 do openly and above board ; upon their doing 
 nothing, therefore, that is not fully avowable ; 
 and upon their fully taking upon themselves 
 the just and proper responsibility of their con- 
 duct, be it what it may. Its real adherents can 
 never, therefore, join any secret society, however 
 honorable and avow r able the objects of such a 
 Society may be. The condition of secrecy 
 in itself creates a certain presumption of ends 
 and aims to say the least selfish, with a collect- 
 ive if not absolutely individual selfishness, even 
 where not directly anti-social; and, speaking 
 among ourselves, or in addressing disciples, we 
 use upon this point much stronger language. 
 
 But the same Religion teaches its adherents 
 also a just respect for the actually existing 
 public opinion, as well as the actually existing- 
 social institutions, even in regard to points on 
 which opinion or institutions may be susceptible 
 of rectification. And especially is this due from 
 a Foreigner tow r ards the laws, the institutions, 
 the customs, the manners and all the other social 
 conditions of the country that gives him hospi- 
 tality. Every thing in the teachings of Comte 
 tends to deeply impress this consideration on 
 the minds of his followers. Especially the repre- 
 
sentation made by those teachings of the urgent 
 social importance at this day of cultivating the 
 spirit of mutual respect and mutual friendliness 
 between the different nationalities that compose 
 our modern civilization. The beneficent conse- 
 quences in all regards, moral and intellectual 
 as well as social and political, of such a spirit 
 and temper it w< tainly needless to dwell 
 
 on, or for one moment to urge, for they will 
 be spontaneously felt by every rightly con 
 tuted mind; but their only reliable foundation 
 can be in the existence of the saint- dispositions 
 among the individuals comp ; tferent 
 
 nationalities, where in fact they 
 very remarkable and most en< 
 already, the ancient sentiments of international 
 hatred, jealousy and dislike being everywhl 
 at this day confined to limited c of the 
 
 populations, classes that have less undergo 
 the reactions of the more wl 
 the modern spirit.*) And the culture of such a 
 mutual friendliness and respect between the 
 
 The few seeming exceptions to this 
 show how ready they arc to disappeai 
 statesmanship shall arise to set aside tlu 
 gratuitously placed in the way of the spontaneously d< 
 
 international amity. 
 
populations themselves, irrespectively of the 
 Governments, is the more important from the 
 fact that the mutual amity friendliness and res- 
 pect between the different peoples composing 
 our modern occidental civilization, need on every 
 ground to be combined with the political inde- 
 pendence of the different nations, independence 
 which, when once all danger of foreign aggression 
 or internal disorder were fully and fairly laid 
 aside, it would be an advantage to develope 
 rather than to further restrict. 
 
 The Lecturer cannot help feeling, therefore, 
 that he owes to the public a certain general 
 account of a doctrine that in his private and 
 personal relations he cannot help propagating. 
 He owes it moreover to the few who do in 
 private listen to him to make this more public 
 (although modest and unobtrusive) exposition, 
 exposition that ought finally to receive the further 
 publicity to be given by the press. In fulfilling 
 this duty he is very desirous of avoiding every 
 utterance that could wound the just susceptibil- 
 ities of any single inhabitant of the city that 
 gives him shelter and protection. The religion 
 that animates his life makes its adherents feel 
 that they have by no means discharged all their 
 
— 10 — 
 
 duties towards the society, and indeed towards 
 the country, in the bosom of which they live, 
 when they have simply paid their rent and 
 taxes and abstained from any breach of the 
 civil law. Now the name of Auguste Comte is 
 beginning to become known, throughout the 
 Intellectual World of all Europe, to such a degree 
 as to make an authentic account of the work 
 of his life and of its culminating characteristics 
 a presumable satisfaction of the curiosity, that 
 will naturally have a certain prevalence in this 
 as in any other city equally intelligent. The 
 doctrines of Auguste Comte treat, however, of 
 such subjects, that in giving any sort of account 
 of them one is necessarily treading on delic; 
 ground; and the Lecturer is desirous at the very 
 outset of allaying apprehensions naturally the 
 fore liable to be awakened by the very subjects, 
 apprehensions, however, that are in reality 
 groundless, or the Lecture would certainly not. 
 be given. At the same time the subjects do give 
 the greater importance to accurate information 
 in regard to the doctrines of a Thinker evidently 
 destined to be much more widely known than 
 he ever was during his life-time, and one who 
 very greatness and the yastness of the work 
 
he accomplished naturally cause to be in the 
 highest degree misunderstood at the outset, 
 wherever the fame of them may Anally reach. 
 The distinctive characteristic of all the spe- 
 culations of Comte consists in their fundamental 
 assumption that all phenomena, social and moral 
 phenomena as well as others, are subject to 
 immutable natural law. This assumption does 
 indeed implicitly underlie all distinctively modern 
 thought, and is, too, precisely that characteristic 
 of the actually prevailing opinion, acknowledged 
 or unacknowledged, that is most constantly and 
 most steadily gaining ground. All belief in the 
 supernatural is more and more universally being 
 set down systematically as superstition. It is not 
 therefore the assumption itself that is so much 
 the distinctive and decisive characteristic of the 
 labors of Auguste Comte as its open recog- 
 nition, and the frank and honest acceptance of 
 all its necessary logical consequences. But the 
 systematic acceptance and open recognition of 
 this underlying principle, at once of Positive 
 Science and of Modern Thought, viz, the uni- 
 versal prevalence of immutable Natural Law, 
 is just that which gives to science a tendency 
 and an ultimate result the very opposite of that 
 
which might naturally be supposed, especially 
 as regards its bearings upon religion, as from 
 the very nature of our subject to day we shall 
 forthwith have to very plainly see. It will al- 
 ready be manifest, indeed, that if the hypothesis 
 of the universal prevalence of natural law were 
 to prove in conformity with fact, it would follow 
 that a positive science of Sociology and a posi- 
 tive science of Morals must necessarily exist, if 
 not actually at least potentially.*) Now the Life- 
 work of Comte consisted essentially in founding 
 these two supreme grades of positive scien 
 positive Sociology and positive Morals. This 
 the same as to say that he actually discovered 
 immutable natural laws at once of social exis- 
 tence and of social development: and also immu- 
 table natural laws to which our interior moral 
 existence, at once intellectual and affective, is 
 subject. But if this were really the Let, 
 
 every one acquainted with the true force of 
 these terms will see at once, that the fact would 
 be of more tremendous importance than any 
 
 *) Some speculators in this sphere, with materialistic ten- 
 dencies and in view of materialistic ends, have proposed to 
 employ the word Psychology as the name of the science which 
 treats o( individual Human Nature, at the same time inverting 
 its position relatively to sociology. 
 
— 13 — 
 
 ever before accomplished on this planet. And 
 an exposition of the doctrines of Comte neces 
 sarily consists, therefore, of an exposition of so- 
 ciological and moral science, of immutable natural 
 laws of Human Existence and Human Develop- 
 ment, social and individual; than which a more 
 important subject; at all events, is inconceivable. 
 Tt must be observed here, however, that in 
 the process of its development, Positive Science, 
 notwithstanding the undisputed Empire it finally 
 acquires over the human mind, has necessarily 
 to pass through a transitionary hypothetical stage, 
 during which its doctrines have no more autho- 
 rity or influence over the general public, ordi- 
 narily indeed much less, than any other sort 
 of doctrine. Only minds of the very rare order 
 that is capable of comprehending, appreciating 
 and verifying directly, the demonstrations on 
 which it rests, are capable at the outset of 
 undergoing its domination and of thus entering 
 into the new Light. For every scientific Dis- 
 covery, especially one of capital importance, is 
 necessarily at first, even in the mind of the 
 Discoverer himself, only a hypothesis, until he 
 has subjected it to rigorous demonstrations, 
 which are often of so difficult a nature that 
 
— i 4 — 
 
 not a single contemporary can be found to ac- 
 complish their verification. The great Kepler 
 declared that he would be himself fully content 
 if he could but be sure that at the end of half 
 a century his works would have found one single 
 evppreciative reader. The spiritual allegiance of 
 the general public is always won over by a 
 much simpler and easier, but more indirect, mode 
 of verification, consisting in the fulfilment of 
 itKe predictions of future occurrences made 
 n the name of the corresponding 'science. In 
 a word, the hypothetical stage of genuine science 
 terminates for the general public only when the 
 hypothesis has received the decisive stamp of 
 Experience. So much is this the case that, when 
 a new doctrine of any sort, professing to be 
 based upon science, starts at once into a wide- 
 popularity, popularity evidently based upon a 
 predilection for the particular doctrines taught, 
 that popularity itself furnishes a pretty strong 
 presumption of a considerable element of char-' 
 latanism in that doctrine. For the genuine n 
 lities of our existence are by no means apt to 
 be sufficiently flattering to our spontaneously 
 predominant inclinations to secure an immediate 
 welcome: the honest revelation of them is much 
 
— is — 
 
 more often accepted only perforce, and after 
 severe castigations at the hand of that unrelen- 
 ting Disciplinarian. 
 
 A second distinctive characteristic of the 
 labors of Comte, of scarcely less importance 
 than the first, save that without that first it 
 would have remained eternally impossible, con- 
 sists in the systematic and constant recognition 
 of science as a one whole, a complete and uni- 
 versal Doctrine, the discovery of positive Socio- 
 logy and positive Moral Science having ren- 
 dered the empire of science conterminous with 
 the ultimate limits of Human Thought. Indeed 
 the constitution of the Scientific Synthesis, the 
 transformation of science into a one, consistent, 
 fully hierarchical Whole, under the systematic 
 supremacy of sociological and moral science, 
 veritably sacred science, and the substitution of 
 this Synthesis for Specialist science, a hetero- 
 geneous assemblage of so-called sciences, sepa- 
 T?".'l sciences, with no systematic link between 
 them, no mutual responsibility, so to speak, is 
 the achievement of supreme importance. It was 
 by just this substitution that Auguste Comte 
 changed entirely the relations between Science 
 and Religion-, for specialist science, whatever the 
 

 — 16 — 
 
 intentions of the savans rv/to cultivate it, is neces- 
 sarily materialistic and atheistic in its tenden- 
 cies; while synthetic science is in all its bearings 
 profoundly religious ; sociological and moral 
 science combining to demonstrate that both from 
 the social and the individual point of view, Re- 
 ligion is beyond all comparison man's supreme 
 concern, and that, too, independently of all im- 
 aginable dogmatic differences, thus transporting 
 all the influence of Science as a 'whole from 
 the side of the modern religious indifference, 
 and the materialism and practical atheism on 
 which that indifference is basid, to the side of 
 Religion and of Christianity, and therefore 
 the side of the Churches so far as their purely 
 spiritual action is concerned. 
 
 Any one sufficiently acquainted; however, 
 with Positive Science, even in its lower gra< 
 or degrees only, mathematical, physical or che 
 mical, will easily understand, and indeed spon-' 
 taneously see for himself, how impossible it were, 
 in a single lecture, adapted to a popular, even 
 although specially intelligent audience, to give 
 anything like a systematic exposition of either 
 of these two new and supreme grades or degr< 
 of Science, or even of one single phase oi either 
 
— 17 — 
 
 of them, such as is indicated in the announcement 
 of our subject for to-day. An exposition, adapted 
 for instance to a scientific school, even of the 
 Positive Theory of the Middle Ages only, would 
 require various conditions in no wise realizable 
 here to-day. All that is attempted is, to give a 
 general conception of these two new sciences, 
 as they will be called, and which, as being new, 
 remain still, necessarily, in their purely hypo- 
 thetical stage. To give a conception at once of 
 the scientific synthesis as a whole, and especially 
 of its iwo supreme degrees, sociological and 
 and moral, sufficiently comprehensive and exact 
 to enable an intelligent mind to judge, whether 
 there be really here something* important enough 
 to be worth the trouble of further and more 
 laborious investigation. And above all, such as 
 to enable the statesman and patriot to form an 
 intelligent judgment on the important question, 
 whether the general dissemination of a knowledge 
 of these new and hypothetical sciences, and 
 especially of the new and hypothetical synthesis 
 of all science, would be an advantage and clear 
 gain to a nation, or whether it were rather a 
 thing* to be watched with suspicion. Dealing 
 with questions so delicate, and of so supreme 
 
— 18 — 
 
 importance; as the very foundations of religion 
 and morality ; it can scarcely help being either 
 the one or the other. 
 
 I. 
 
 From this point of view, the most important 
 question is, no doubt, the bearing of the scien- 
 tific synthesis, and of these its two supreme 
 grades, upon Religion. Now the fundamental 
 principle of positive science, universal underlying 
 assumption of all distinctively modern thought, 
 the subjection of all phenomena whatever to 
 immutable natural law, seems at first sight not 
 merely hostile but fatal to religion, as casting 
 profound discredit upon the religious dogma 
 based altogether upon supernaturalist conceptions. 
 But the discredit exists already, inflicted upon 
 the theological philosophy by positive science 
 in general, discredit gradually growing for cen- 
 turies past, and no doubt at this day being more 
 intensified than ever, and by positive science 
 too. But all this discredit, as actually existing, 
 is necessarily due to specialist science exclu- 
 sively. The Scientific Synthesis is altogether 
 too new, too little known, so far as known too 
 manifestly hypothetical as yet, to have had, up 
 
— 19 — 
 
 to this day, any appreciable influence upon public 
 opinion. Positive Science does tend no doubt ; 
 positive science in every form ; and tend irresis- 
 tibly, to make all belief in the supernatural be 
 looked upon as superstition. And it does so, not 
 by directly attacking theological dogmas, so much 
 as by constantly furnishing a greater and greater 
 number of purely natural explanations of pheno- 
 mena formerly accounted for, as indeed was at 
 first the case with all phenomena whatever, on 
 the theological principle; thus giving rise to an 
 irresistible suspicion, that all things have a natural 
 explanation if one could but find it out. And 
 this tendenc5^ ; again, is much strengthened by 
 the contrast presented between the clearness, 
 the precision, the consistency and the practical 
 utility, as well as the certitude, inherent in scientific 
 conceptions, and the vagueness, obscurity, doubt- 
 fulness, and, above all at this day, the moral and 
 practical impotence which characterize the theo- 
 logical or supernatural. It is easy, moreover, to 
 see that this tendency to treat the supernatural 
 as always a mere superstition sheltering one's 
 self in so doing under the aegis of science, exists 
 in thousands upon thousands of souls that never 
 give themselves the smallest trouble about philo- 
 
sophical speculation or scientific inv< ^n. 
 
 that would think all those til 
 
 and one insufferably tedioi . but can still 
 
 very easily appreciate the convenience of be 
 emancipated from an irk- 
 The fundamental principle of the I* 
 scientific Philosophy, th< died Law of the 
 
 Three States, the di< of \vh: rtli 
 
 to sociological science, sin | 
 dency of modern opinion t and 
 
 inevitable one, an i >m. 
 
 the fundamental and immutable 1 
 of the human mind. 
 But, in Frankly 
 irresistible, and then 
 all its Logical consequences, tl 
 thesis gets b< ind with 
 
 utterly irresistible, It all supernaturalist i 
 nations of phenomen; 
 
 is simply by means of the substitut natural 
 
 explanations. The phenomi 
 remain unchanged, their reality in no wise dim- 
 inished by any modifi sin our 
 It' Christianity instance, Chri 
 great social fact, with all its m d spirit 
 splendors, is no longer to b< 
 
— 21 — 
 
 supernatural product; then is it a natural product 
 of Humanity, that is to say of the Human Race 
 as a grand whole, working out its normal unity 
 under the immutable natural laws imposed on 
 it in the creation. How can any one, without 
 proclaiming himself incapable of recognizing 
 the moral and spiritual phenomena around him, 
 and those presented by our past history, contrive 
 to evade the cogency of this consideration? It 
 were easy enough, at all events, to go on to the 
 next step, viz. that Christianity, relatively to 
 all the past the supreme product oi Humanity, 
 although possibly destined to be absorbed in some 
 still higher development, must necessarily be 
 utterly incapable of simply dying out and dis- 
 appearing. Dropping indeed its supernaturalism, 
 which, indispensable at the outset, when any 
 other basis for religion would have been incon- 
 ceivable, has been for several centuries past its 
 one constant source of weakness, and now at 
 last of almost total paralysis, it must necessarily 
 be destined, as to all its fundamental and essential 
 characteristics, as an Ideal of Human Existence, 
 an embodiment of noblest and divinest Human 
 Aspirations, not merely to perpetuation, but to 
 a large development of its efficacy and power. 
 
For religion is one, continuous and eternal : it 
 is only the dogmas that differ and change with 
 the increase and development of the p< 
 knowledge of Manki i suppose that Reli- 
 
 gion, to suppose, th< . that Chri 
 
 anity, is capabL m in any 
 
 grand and sublime ehara< ly hun 
 
 and purely natural as all tl itly 
 
 are, on the theory, that is to uni- 
 
 versality of Natural Lav. . 
 any mind with e\ 
 instruction. The hun 
 our modern occidental civilization, 
 
 rather to perish 
 
 The same tli : nly 
 
 of ( Christianity but of .ill tl tiled d 
 
 religions upon the of this globe. The 
 
 dogmas of the p; all alike ficti 
 
 the religio all alike real and true 
 
 speak more exactly, R ual, 
 
 indestructible, unchai 
 to a progressive, ever 
 lopment. ' 
 
 of absolute equality . tl 
 
 Religious S3 the Pa all 
 
 beings on this 
 
— 23 — 
 
 hierarchical. All the religious dogmas of the 
 past, and all the different religious systems based 
 upon them, have been indeed perfectly natural 
 developments of the Human Race, all tending 
 towards a Final Unity, truly sublime and glorious, 
 first attempted in the form of Universal Empire, 
 but afterwards in the very much higher form 
 spontaneously indicated by Catholicism, that of 
 a Universal Church, in which form alone it is 
 susceptible of a complete, final realization. The 
 General History of the Human Race, and the 
 History of Religion, the one and the other alike 
 truly told, are in fact one and the same thing. There 
 never has been and there never can be any 
 Human wSociety that is not based upon Religion, 
 in the scientific, or what is the same thing the 
 universal, sense of the word Religion. In my 
 last year's Lecture*) the long, unbroken line 
 of gradual progress was traced from the Feti- 
 chistic cradle of the Human Race, up to and 
 including the Great Roman Empire, which laid 
 the most essential foundations of our modern 
 Occidental Society, but still needed certain in- 
 dispensable conditions that were spontaneously 
 
 *) „Auguste COMTE and the Philosophy of History". 
 ( Hitherto unpublished). 
 
— 24 — 
 
 developed in fact by the Feudo-Catholic Civili- 
 zation of the Rfiddle-Ages, viz: (1) The double 
 emancipation of the; Working Men and of Won. 
 (2) the development of a ral Culture 
 
 independent of sternal, 
 
 closely connected with thi 
 of the Spiritual Power from t ; <'- temporal 
 All these mere! tnd th 
 
 provisional, forms ol 1 
 Christianit an id< 
 
 existence, ideal \ 
 
 velopment carried up to a high 
 perfection, and attaining under Chri 
 veritable sublimity. In this raerelj 
 state, however, i em has 
 
 capable of maintainii 
 
 to be permanent, and i i [uman 
 
 Society forward continuously, and wit my 
 
 further break, towards its I 
 
 and the Ideal til indeed tin \ tlutely 
 
 one) must both b< 
 
 the advent o\ positive knowl< 
 
 Laws ol Human Nature ] and individual. 
 
 Die scientific synthesis, th< 
 
 the adherents of all th< 
 
 the means of attaining with certaii 
 
— ^5 — 
 
 which are common to them all, laying aside 
 nothing" but just those divergences, closely linked 
 with the variations in dogmas all alike fictitious, 
 which have struck them all alike with paralysis, 
 but naturally struck with the greatest severity 
 the most advanced. 
 
 The impression generally prevailing, wherever 
 there exists only a vague and superficial know- 
 ledge of the Positive Doctrine, that this doctrine 
 is atheistic, is equally baseless and erroneous 
 with the idea of its contradicting and being a 
 rival of Christianity. Science, accounting for all 
 phenomena on the principle of immutable natural 
 law, ceases entirely no doubt to recur to the 
 Divine Will as any explanation of phenomena. And 
 Specialist Science, occupying itself exclusively 
 with purely material phenomena or with vital phen o - 
 menainapurely materialistic spirit, seeking to re- 
 present them as identical with the merely chemical 
 and physical, exerts an irresistibly materialistic and 
 atheistic influence, even without any direct con- 
 tradiction of theological dogmas, influence indeed 
 that does not become in the legist degree less 
 energetic, by means of the profession of Christian 
 beliefs, let it be ever so sincere, on the part of 
 the savans who cultivate it. The reading public 
 
— 26 — 
 
 feels that such a profession is a contradiction; 
 the majority, at least among the more active 
 minds, go farther, and set it down as an in- 
 sincerity, a prudent and indeed wise hypocri 
 which they will do well to imit >r this 
 
 materialistic and atheistic influem rids mainly 
 
 on the striking contrast b< luded to, b« 
 
 the certainty, clearness, precision and pr 
 utility of scientific con< 
 synonymous, so far as th< 
 
 arc concerned, with materialist'' — 
 
 and the uncertaintx . ncy 
 
 and growing practical U 
 conceptions. And this atheistic influen 
 much increased by the • 
 resist it. seeing that th< 
 in the absence of the scientific synt 
 the form of persistence in claiming the exclu- 
 sively supernatural basis of ! n and I 
 Church, and the absolute : .ty. thei 
 the sake o\ maintaining tl 4 main 
 also, however imj 
 
 natural. Tl I faith of the savans, the I 
 
 and journalistic class, the men o\ the world, 
 who pretend to accede to ti. 
 something more than doubtful. 
 
ever the Supernatural is laid aside completely 
 and systematically, one can immediately begin 
 to see that if Science, in its religious synthesis, 
 is perfectly silent in regard to the existence of 
 God, and the divine creation of the universe, 
 that silence does not in the smallest degree imply 
 any negation. What the Positive Philosophy*) 
 asserts, in regard to all such questions as those 
 of absolute origins and absolute existence, is 
 simply that they are utterly inaccessible to all 
 our means of positive knowledge, and that 
 therefore the human mind tends, spontaneously 
 and irresistibly, to abandon their discussion in 
 favor of the positive knowledge offered by 
 science. In this it only seconds the theological 
 doctrine itself, which does not pretend to base 
 itself on Science, but on the contrary on Faith. 
 Moreover, the silence of the scientific synthesis 
 is a respectful, a reverential silence. It is simply 
 abstinence from the vain presumption by which 
 finite man, with his so limited powers and capa- 
 
 *) The Positive Philosophy is at bottom simply the coor- 
 dination of the fundamenta] principles, underlying at once Positive 
 Science itself, and its several logical methods, or rather different 
 degrees of development of a one same method. But, by a legi- 
 timate extension of the signification, the term may be employed 
 as synonymous with the Scientific Synthesis itself. 
 

 cities, pretends to grasp the Infinite One, and 
 discuss familiarly 1 1 : 
 
 : mplv the ind 
 
 wise, whi< I ambit 
 
 that would fain 
 
 depths, the in 
 
 !! to th( within 
 
 •1). and in ' 
 
 abundantly pr 
 needs and his m< 
 
 relative I 
 to the mat dly 
 
 pro 1 
 
 sonable loi ard 
 
 to I 
 
 Creation of the Qi 
 
 of mere teeliiu 
 
 upward- towards ible, n< 
 
 be more rational than I 
 tin* limits 
 be, there mus 
 different with th< 
 
— 29 — 
 
 that is within the sphere of the Knowable 
 supreme, is positively known to us, that Know- 
 able Supreme must needs be, relatively to us, 
 in the direction of the Unknowable Supreme in 
 the Beyond, and the most perfect Representation 
 of that Absolute Supreme that can by any 
 possibility be even conceivable by us. In this 
 idea there is at all events a ground for Belief in 
 God, far superior in cogency to any that a simply 
 theological Dogma can offer, while here also — 
 and this may be still more important — there 
 is a complete conciliation between the Scientific 
 Synthesis, with its total silence in regard to the 
 creation of the Universe, the Divine Existence, 
 and every thing else in the sphere of the 
 Unknowable, and the most profound, the most 
 devout belief both in the Divine Existence and 
 in the Creation. 
 
 The Scientific Synthesis demands, no doubt, 
 a conception of God, and especially of the 
 Relations between God and Man, different from 
 those that have hitherto prevailed; but those 
 which it tends to substitute are infinitely better 
 adapted to inspire adoration, and present the 
 most striking contrast to the semi-contemptuous 
 indifference and scepticism which actually charac- 
 
terize so large a proportion of the nominal 
 
 Catholics and nominal Christians of to-day. All 
 
 the modification, in fact, which the scientific 
 
 synthesis imposes on the belief in God and in 
 
 the divine creation of the Universe is, that 
 
 instead of supposing to have created a 
 
 disorderly World, so to need 
 
 constant interventions of the divin< 
 
 Will, in order to protect I lis own eternal purp< i 
 
 from defeat by the spontai He 
 
 had Himself implanted in 1 itures, such a 
 
 belief must re< that God, whom the 
 
 ( Christian Scriptures ..in 
 
 whom there is no vari 
 
 shadow L, on the contra 
 
 a perfectly orderly world, s 
 
 and so profoundly ord< at by virtue 
 
 the principles an< ed in it 
 
 the creation itself — princi] 
 
 which in their actual OJ I to 
 
 us by positive science under the name of immu- 
 table natural laws - it spontaneous 
 out, without any further info un- 
 
 changing pur] ' the Enfin r. And 
 
 in thus humbly resigning ourselves to the 
 fact,thatthe sphere of Eternal M3 ;boundl< 
 
— 31 — 
 
 and the sphere of positive Human Knowledge 
 very narrowly circumscribed, not only have we to 
 be penetrated with profound gratitude for the 
 far higher and diviner conception of God thus 
 brought within our reach, and for the general 
 fact, indeed, that pre-eminently in this spiritual 
 sphere are our real needs and our means of 
 acquiring positive knowledge strictly conter- 
 minous; but in recognizing the real, the absolute 
 God to be necessarily unknowable, and the 
 completely demonstrable Humanity to be neces- 
 sarily the highest humanly conceivable Repre- 
 sentation of the Divine Existence, and therefore 
 the direct object of our worship, as well as of 
 our supreme affection and our constant and 
 devoted service, we are delivered at one stroke 
 from all the immense, the insurmountable diffi- 
 culties, moral as well as intellectual, which have 
 always heretofore marred the perfectness of our 
 adoration, and dimmed the brightness of our 
 faith. No human soul can ever completely 
 surmount the terrible moral difficulty involved 
 in the fact, that it is totally impossible really 
 to conceive of an Omnipotent Creator who is 
 not necessarily the Author of all Evil as well 
 as of all Good, until one bows in humble sub- 
 
— 3^ — 
 
 mission before the fact, that the Absolut* 
 necessarily the unknowable, and the Suprei 
 Being whom we can really know, and there! 
 really worship and faithfully 
 
 ■ve, must n< only the 
 
 supreme. This humble i nt sub: 
 
 once accomplished, nothi 
 mar the profound and enthu 
 naturally, n 
 
 of the 
 
 towards a more and 
 
 under the SU] blind 
 
 Fatality into 
 
 While the same 
 
 us, at the 
 
 once to our rationali 
 
 by the sp< 
 
 petual rig and tinkei 
 
 handiwork oi tl 
 
 Creator's own des 
 
 hitherto so profoundly shackled. illy dur 
 
 n cent centuries, th< 
 
 seem to threaten 1 [er now with 
 
 tinction, all disap] 
 
 o\ Christianity, its noble moral 
 
 intact, only developed still hi 
 
— 33 — 
 
 diviner level, remain planted on a foundation 
 utterly irrefragable and immovable. 
 
 For the scientific synthesis completely de- 
 monstrates the absolutely unquestionable validity 
 of all the practical side of Christianity. It sets 
 aside its supernaturalism and that which depends 
 wholly and exclusively upon that supernaturalism. 
 But only mostprofoundly to confirm, and in fact in- 
 corporate into itself, all the rest, all, without suffer- 
 ing one jot or one tittle to pass away unfulfilled.*) 
 And how little indeed is it that thus disappears! How 
 infinitely greater is that which remains, restored 
 in fact by the scientific synthesis, by it picked 
 up out of the mire and mud into which it has 
 been so long trampled by an atheistic and fan- 
 
 *) Of course it can hardly be necessary to explain here, 
 what will be spontaneously comprehended by every well regu- 
 lated mind, that these expressions give not the smallest coun- 
 tenance to the pretensions of the unauthorized and incompetent 
 to hang their own crude schemes upon the literal expressions 
 of the Xew Testament, or any other Text whatsoever. Modern 
 society will certainly not go back, for instance, to the Commu- 
 nism of the Early Christians, or any other form of anarchical 
 Equalitarianism, alike chimerical and degrading, and degrading 
 most of all to the popular mass. Besides, it is the scientific 
 synthesis that is the supreme Authority as to the question, Avhat 
 it is that constitutes Christianity, as Religion, when the theo- 
 logical dogma is laid aside. Only it is certainly not the omissions 
 that will ever shock, or be complained of by, any Christian 
 whomsoever, be he ever so fervent, devout and self sacrificing. 
 
 3 
 
— 34 — 
 
 fastical philosophy, a materialistic science and 
 a still more materialistic and atheistic Industrialism, 
 which, in its actual unregulation, individualism 
 and anarchy, is no progress at all, but only a 
 hideous, infernal monster devouring its own 
 children. There is no progress at all, but only 
 an unspeakable degradation; something far lower 
 down than any mere retr ion, in the 
 
 u]) as the [deal, the real and | A [deal 
 
 men, and even <>t women too, the veritable 
 of worship and service for at 
 the seven, and with a constantly growing tendency 
 to include all the seven, to mak< the temple 
 
 services themselves subordinate to this really 
 
 dominant ideal, the Sardanapalian Ideal — the 
 
 ( retting, the 1 laving and the Enjoyii rial 
 
 objects and selfish g ns. ITu 
 
 synthesis decisively demonstrates, thai and 
 
 spiritual realities of human nam ally 
 
 that which has been SO admirably I 
 the Catholic Mystics as the Interior Lite, and I 
 sublime social and moral destin human 
 
 race revealed by Christianity, an grandly 
 
 and nobly worked out by the Christian Church 
 in the past, especially by th( lerable 
 
 Catholic Church of the Middle that truly 
 
— 35 — 
 
 heroic period of religion and morality ; are none 
 of them dependent in the smallest degree upon 
 the theological dogmas with which they were 
 historically linked, and ten centuries ago, in 
 fact, necessarily linked. The theological dogmas 
 may utterly disappear, but all this other side 
 of Christianity, the really and eternally grand, 
 sublime, truly divine side, will remain intact, 
 not a jot nor a tittle of the spirit of it being 
 disturbed or compromised in the smallest degree, 
 this ^spirit that giveth life" being protected the 
 rather against any further possibility of being 
 sacrificed to „the letter that killeth". Christianity, 
 in fact, in all that practically constitutes its 
 essential elements, is only confirmed, placed on 
 the immovable, irrefragable basis of positive 
 demonstration, carried up moreover to yet higher 
 flights of sublimity. All this higher side of 
 Christianity, all the very essence of the Christian 
 Religion remains, as the Eternal Aspiration of 
 our race, gradually developed athwart the 
 centuries, by the ministry of the highest and 
 most exquisite individual products of that race. 
 It remains as the undying Ideal of the race, 
 yes, and its predestined end too. In spite of all 
 the grovelling tendencies which so strikingly 
 
 3* 
 
- 36 - 
 
 mark the passing hour, Mankind will still go on 
 struggling upward towards the ideal gradually 
 developed by our race, and which ideal, con- 
 stituting the essential characteristic of human 
 nature, evidently has for its true name Huma- 
 nity, seeing that it is it which differentiates that 
 human nature from mere brute nature, from 
 that merely animal and vegetative life which 
 the dominant philosophy would fain <nt. 
 
 with the addition simply of a beaver-vulpine 
 intellect, as the whole of our human nature. 
 And the scientific synthesis comes now. th< 
 fore, not merely to furnish a do un- 
 
 dation that nothing can ever in the small* 
 
 degree shake, on which the Culture of the [deal 
 may be gradually re-instituted, in proportion 
 the old theological dogmatic ails it — 
 
 and the theological dogma does in fact abandon 
 
 the moral ideal to a far j 
 
 than it is itself openly abandoned by cotem- 
 porary opinion — but it come to render 
 
 to the ideal and its culture, in other wt 
 religion, a yet further service 
 coming far more immediately i and ener- 
 
 getic. It comes, in fact to make it possible 
 for the theological dogmas, or rather tor the 
 
— 37 — 
 
 theological churches, so far as they yet retain 
 any hold at all upon the modern mind, to con- 
 secrate themselves once more to the energetic 
 service of the noble Christian Ideal, the admirable 
 christian moral type ; and thereby regain, as 
 most unquestionably; in following so dignified 
 a policy they could not fail to do, a very large 
 measure of their ancient social prestige and 
 glory, and even of their purely spiritual power. 
 For the Scientific Synthesis entirely 
 sustains Christianity in its general representation 
 of human nature as needing a profound regen- 
 eration, and of the true destiny of man 
 as consisting in the eternally progressive 
 consecration of his merely exterior existence 
 to the culture and development of a noble in- 
 terior existence, under the guiding influence of 
 an ideal of moral and spiritual perfection, which 
 becomes only the higher and diviner for being 
 referred directly to Humanity; under the reac- 
 tions of which interior life he has, on pain 
 of forfeiting his true destiny and sinking into a 
 degradation which has no name, to more and 
 more subordinate, in his practical life also, his 
 egotist and animal instincts, the lower side of 
 his nature, to the social sympathies and disin- 
 
- 3« - 
 
 terested impulsions , to tliat Universal Love 
 which the Christian Scriptures declare to be 
 essentially identical with the Divine Nature 
 itself.*) In all this it manifestly presents a marl. 
 indeed glaring contrast to spe< 
 and other doctrines claiming at this day a more 
 or less scientific character, and pursuing, or at 
 least tending towards, the same general i 
 specialist science, viz, the mat 
 dation of our human kind. But in proport 
 Auguste Comte advanced I corapl 
 
 systematization of th( synthesis, furnish- 
 
 ing thus to religion a d 
 superior to any she had been able b< 
 he, at the same time, and by the same on, 
 
 more and more clearly den the en 
 
 nature of the distinction I 
 
 iigion, and the imperative necessity of subordina- 
 ting in practice the Dogma, which is but 
 to the Religion, which is the supr md in- 
 
 dispensable end. It was naturally a hard lesson 
 to teach to neophytes, enraptured with tin 
 session o\ a system combining the highest 
 ceivable sublimity in the doctrines, with 
 nitic solidity in the foundations. It wa 
 
 *) n God is Love." i John IV. 
 
— 39 — 
 
 misfortune that a premature death took him 
 away from us, before he had had time sufficiently 
 to impress upon his disciples the necessity, if 
 they would be full)" consistent with the whole 
 of the teachings of moral and sociological science, 
 of systematically subordinating dogmatic instruc- 
 tion to the development of religious practices. 
 This, however, will be the distinctive charac- 
 teristic of the grand movement of religious re- 
 construction, and social and moral regeneration, 
 that will necessarily spring up, sooner or later, 
 on the basis presented to religion by the scien- 
 tific synthesis. The positivist Religious Propa- 
 gande will bear no resemblance whatever to 
 the formation of a new sect in the bosom of 
 our modern society, or employ any of the 
 methods one would expect on the part of a 
 new religion. The positive religion of Huma- 
 nity is not, properly speaking, a new religion. 
 Sociological science has demonstrated that 
 religion is essentially one. For religion 
 is, at bottom, the systematic development of 
 the Human Unity, social and individual. Let 
 theological beliefs disappear totally, that Cul- 
 ture of the Human Unity, which has in fact 
 grown up spontaneously under their aegis, will 
 
— 4 o — 
 
 have lost not one tittle of its importance. It 
 will remain in the future, what it has been in 
 the past, the indispensable foundation of Human 
 Existence, both social and individual. The actual 
 revolutionary state on one side, of which state 
 temporal repression serves only to increase 
 the intensity, and on the other side the constant 
 eind progressive increase of nervous disorders, 
 insanity and suicide, concurrently with the 
 immense improvement of sanitary conditions, 
 far as regards those merely physical and chemical, 
 are more than cibundantly sufficient demonstration 
 of this fact. Refusing the Jiamc of Religion to 
 that culture, which all the so-called religions of 
 the past actually did furnish, but which theo 
 logical religions have become powerless to main 
 tain, their forces being absorbed in the fruitless 
 struggle to maintain a belief in their dogmas, 
 makes no difference whatever to the fact of the 
 indispensable necessity of this systematic culture 
 of the social and individual unity, which, whether 
 called religion or not, is equally man's supreme 
 necessity.*) And for this culture the scientific syn- 
 
 *) When it is considered that in this sense the word 
 „unity a is synonymous with „sanity a (in the fully integral - 
 of this latter word), the undeniable character of the assertion 
 in the text becomes manifest. 
 
— 4 i — 
 
 thesis demonstrably furnishes incomparably the 
 most perfect dogmatic foundation imaginable. 
 
 Now the energy of religion ; as such a culture, 
 resides in its practices, above all in its Worship. 
 Simply making the Positive Dogma the basis of the 
 system of Public Instruction, would in nowise suf- 
 fice to terminate the modern anarchy and disorder, 
 even if it were possible, which it certainly is not, 
 in the absence of the corresponding religion. But 
 the only Religious Practices based wholly on the 
 scientific synthesis which are not at this day pre- 
 mature, are the purely personal; and the positivisc 
 religious propagande will, therefore, necessarily 
 aim especially, and at first almost exclusively, at 
 the dissemination of the practice of the purely per- 
 sonal positive prayer, and address itself by prefer- 
 ence, therefore, to the isolated individual. For it is 
 evidently only the purely personal practices that 
 can sufficiently prepare for any collective adora- 
 tions ; while these again can in the first instance 
 be only purely domestic. It is only after a long pre- 
 paration in these more restricted spheres, the purely 
 personal and the domestic, that the grand and sub- 
 lime Festivals of the fully Public Worship of FIu- 
 manity can be practically inaugurated, and that only 
 in a social situation spontaneously prepared for it by 
 
— 4 2 — 
 
 that evolution in opinion, from Theology towards 
 Positive Science, which is going on everywhere 
 throughout our modern European society, and 
 producing, as long as the evolution remains 
 purely spontaneous, and therefore necessarily 
 irreligious, more and more profound social dis- 
 orders, disorders which in fact nothing but the 
 inauguration of the Public Worship of Humanity 
 can ever definitively terminate. 
 
 Meantime the Positivist School, simply as a 
 School of Science and Philosophy, pursues its 
 calm, quiet, dignified but unobtrusive action upon 
 public opinion, action becoming gradually irres 
 tible, by virtue of the profound harmony between 
 its teachings and the spontaneous and immutable 
 tendencies of modern Thought. It may be per- 
 mitted to the Lecturer to remark here, incident- 
 ally, the striking contrast presented by the action 
 of this school to that of the partisans of other 
 modern doctrines, substituting as it does a calm, 
 patient, unobtrusive public instruction, for the 
 noisy discussions and popular agitations by which 
 our modern society is harassed and fatigued, in 
 the interest of all sorts of doctrines and schemes 
 each of which would fain impose itself by force, 
 and violence upon a reluctant public. 
 
— 43 — 
 
 But still, however certain the ultimate 
 triumph and universal prevalence of the scien- 
 tific synthesis may be, Auguste Comte saw 
 finally, that the object and aim which constituted 
 the supreme, all-mastering passion of his life, 
 the definitive surmounting of the modern anarchy 
 and disorder, needed yet another and more de- 
 cisive line of action, on the part of his more 
 unhesitating and radically faithful followers. 
 While he had fulty demonstrated that the Social 
 Inauguration of the Systematic Worship of 
 Humanity, is the only possible means of definit- 
 ively terminating the actually existing and ever- 
 growing revolutionary agitation, the task of 
 accomplishing this Inauguration is one which 
 may very possibly occupy at least whole gener- 
 ations yet to come, although perfectly certain 
 to be accomplished sooner or later. The question 
 therefore necessarily arose, the question moreover 
 of incomparably the most pressing and immediate 
 importance : what can be done in the meantime 
 to arrest the progress of this revolutionary agi- 
 tation, and prevent the terrible conflagrations 
 with which it threatens our modern society. 
 Auguste Comte, in this situation, so full of dan- 
 gers, strongly urged upon his disciples the 
 
— 44 — 
 
 duty of employing the scientific synthesis, first 
 and foremost, as a means of enabling the actual 
 churches to regain much of the social prestige 
 and purely spiritual power of which they have 
 been quite wrongly, irrationally and altogether 
 empirically deprived. It is only ignorance — 
 sociological ignorance — on the part of the public, 
 that makes it attribute to the religion and the 
 moral ideal of Christianity, the discredit at this 
 day inevitably attaching to its dogma. There is 
 not the smallest shadow of any justification, fur- 
 nished by science as a whole, for the actually 
 prevailing religious scepticism and indifference. 
 It is this prevailing religious indifference that 
 is the source whence is being distilled the spi- 
 ritual dynamite, that threatens one day to ex- 
 plode, no one can tell how soon, and strew all 
 Europe with ruins. It was therefore the duty oi 
 his disciples, those at all events who aspired 
 to carry on the great religious work, for which 
 the scientific synthesis furnished the dogmatic 
 foundation, to take their stand between the 
 christian churches on one side, and atheistic and 
 materialistic science, in a word specialist science, 
 and the metaphysical philosophy in all its forms, 
 on the other side, and, in the name of synthetic 
 
— 45 — 
 
 science and positive philosophy, to defend the 
 cause of a sound spirituality, the Cause of Reli- 
 gion, the cause of Christianity, the cause of the 
 Churches themselves, therefore, so far as regards 
 all their purely spiritual interests, and so to make 
 it possible for them to resume their old attitude 
 of spiritual and moral energy, whereby they 
 would inevitably regain very much of their long- 
 lost social prestige, and so be able, by bracing 
 up the general moral tone, and infusing some 
 little beginning at least of moral regulation into 
 our practical and industrial life, to rescue our 
 modern civilization from the imminent dangers 
 which threaten it. It is mainly the fact that, by 
 the decay of theological religion, our industrial 
 life is given over at this day to utter material- 
 ism and practical atheism, in other words to a 
 state of total moral anarchy and unregulation, 
 that has exposed modern society to its present 
 dangers. And it is very plain that, in the actual 
 state of public opinion, the Temporal Govern- 
 ment is totally powerless to deal effectually with 
 our modern Industrial Life, its attempted inter- 
 ference, indeed, running serious risk of increasing 
 the actual evils. The theological churches, whose 
 dogma is adapted only to an essentially military 
 
r 46 - 
 
 society, are totally incompetent alone to regu- 
 late a society become radically industrial: Posi- 
 tive Sociology and Positive Moral Science are 
 indispensable guides in an operation so difficult 
 and so delicate: but, resuming their ancient 
 function, in the Middle Ages so admirably sus- 
 tained, of the culture of the human heart, the 
 development of noble sentiments of devotedness 
 and universal love, the systematic prevalence 
 of which can alone give a real dignity to Human 
 Individual Existence, while alone furnishing a 
 secure foundation for the Social Harmony, they 
 could not fail to experience a very large measure 
 of rehabilitation in public opinion, seeing that 
 in all that supremely important element of the 
 christian doctrine, which ought to be regarded 
 as its true, its highest end, it has now positive 
 science fully on its side, reaffirming, on just 
 those logical foundations which experience has 
 proved to be irrefragable, all its fundamental 
 assertions. The supernatural element in the 
 theological dogma inevitably remains under its 
 actual discredit; but still with this difference, 
 that while the scientific synthesis recogni, 
 the impossibility of any systematic assertion in 
 the sphere of the absolute, it protects even this 
 
— 47 — 
 
 element of the theological doctrine from systematic 
 denial. In the very act of transforming positive 
 science into religious dogma, the scientific 
 synthesis proclaims unhesitatingly, and in un- 
 mistakeable terms, the necessary supremacy of 
 religion, irrespectively of all dogmatic differences, 
 as the only basis on which Human Society can 
 by any possibility ever rest. It paves the way 
 thus for a Universal League of Religion, in 
 which all the different Christian Churches, not 
 to speak of other Religions, may, on the com- 
 mon basis of the separation of the spiritual 
 power from the temporal power, but without 
 any compromising formal compact on the part 
 of any one of those Churches, and simply by 
 tacitly abstaining from sacrificing their Religion 
 to their Dogma, present an essentially united 
 front to the common Enemy, the hydra-headed 
 enemy, whose general name is Irreligion, among 
 whose many heads we see the hideous forms 
 of Vice, Sensualism, Selfishness, Disorder, Revolt, 
 Despotism, Anarchy. Positive Science in fact, 
 after having so long been the enemy of reli- 
 gion, becomes henceforth its faithful servant. 
 No doctrine can henceforth, pretending to be 
 positive science, fail in this condition, without 
 
_ 4 8 - 
 
 stamping upon its own brow the indelible brand 
 of Charlatanism. But the abject slave of reli- 
 gion, no, by no means: that were an infidelity 
 to its high calling. To pretend to treat that 
 true which is known not to be true; to pretend 
 to treat that as certain which is known to be 
 beyond our means of rational in ion — 
 
 that on the pan ience, or it 
 
 organs, were a treas 
 
 itself, perpetuating the &m, 
 
 Doubt and Uncertainty inthissph< that 
 
 the possibility is fully demons! 
 an end for ever to tfa 
 the weakness, and indeed of the \ 
 of religion, whirl llv 
 
 to deplore. And it is to In- 
 timate prominence thi 
 and of the part to be played in it by tie 
 
 ti\e Religion of Humanity, and ally in 
 
 the Development of the Universal I 
 Religion, that the Lecturer is writing the litl 
 
 work before alluded 
 
 What has been during the presefl ry 
 
 railed Philosophical History, pl< itly 
 
 at just the same point of \ 
 
 t Simplc and snmmai 
 Religion of Human 
 
— 49 — 
 
 Sociology. It studies social phenomena as the 
 natural products of their antecedents; and as ten- 
 ding naturally to bring about their consequences. 
 It does so however only tacitly and not system- 
 atically; in order to avoid an open and direct 
 contradiction of the theological dogma ; side by 
 side with which it has to contrive to subsist, as 
 part of the same official system of public in- 
 struction. None the less does this same Philo- 
 sophical History treat religion as ; in its purview, 
 simply a social phenomenon, a purely natural 
 phenomenon. Its professors may be ever so 
 much nominally christians, but none the less is 
 the influence of their teachings upon theological 
 beliefs the same as that of the scientific spe- 
 cialists, except that the materialistic and atheistic 
 tendency is still more pronounced and deci- 
 sive. It institutes for the intellectually cultured 
 classes; and indeed for the reading public 
 generally, a complete personal emancipation 
 from the very last trace of any real belief, 
 either in theological dogmas or in the religion 
 based upon them, generally combined, it is true, 
 with an external profession of the officially pre 
 vailing religion, be it w T hat it may, and with 
 just sufficient external conformity to its practices 
 
to avoid any open appearance of rupture. Such 
 a conformity, in itself wise no doubt. : -led 
 
 to aid in impe m the less instruct 
 
 timed to be in of the 
 
 of religion, and on the low 
 
 • ly in greater i lolatiori 
 
 in the only doctrin< nerally 
 
 capable of furnishing to r tble 
 
 dogmatic foundation. 1 he mol 
 and indeed \\ nly 
 
 the churches, the catholic church i dly, 
 
 cannot be blamed for n uch 
 
 a support and rrpie 
 
 hesion, however mai 
 
 catholic church has nr 
 
 the 
 
 tion, least of all that eminent body which 
 
 this da] 
 
 force. It was simply im] 
 
 situation. [Tie Church had neither fulcrum I 
 
 lever. Men's real beliefs \\ i 
 
 side, Not a singl 
 
 any longer willii lend it U the 
 
 temporal arm: and, b< 
 
 experience had shown the ii 
 
 temporal arm. in our occidental * 
 
— 5* - 
 
 accomplish anything in the spiritual sphere 
 beyond the intensification of its disorder. How- 
 ever excellent the motive and intention, the 
 method of the specialist savans and of the phi- 
 losophical historians, was, from its very first 
 inception, in spite of the warm and almost en- 
 thusiastic reception it met with in the great 
 world, doomed to inevitable failure, if only by 
 one radical and fatal vice, viz : that of being 
 in direct opposition to the fundamental tendencies 
 of Human Nature. The scheme overlooked two 
 or three of the principal facts in the case, over- 
 sight rather singular on the part of savans and 
 philosophers, who pride themselves especially 
 on the strictest fidelity to natural realities, on 
 being indeed above the reach of human delu- 
 sions. It overlooked these three facts among 
 others: (1) That it is men's real beliefs that are 
 apt to control their actual life; (2) that inferiors 
 are very apt to imitate their betters, especially 
 in following the bent of their spontaneous in- 
 clinations; (3) that information of all kinds tends 
 to spread itself more rapidly than ever at this 
 day, when a certain degree of education, just 
 enough at all events to be dangerous, is being 
 every where popularized, the temporal govern- 
 
ments themselves aiding 1 . Ft is hard to find to- 
 day a rural nook sufficiently remote from Kail- 
 roads, Telegraphs and Newspapers not to furnish 
 peasants, who may be heard saying ach 
 
 other over their cups : ..< >ur M 
 believe in God, but they don't believe in Him 
 themselves". And unhappily tl ily too 
 
 many demagogical 
 the dangers necessarily 1 in such a 
 
 situation. 
 
 Now it is by openly and systematically 
 recognizing the subordination of social and moral 
 phenomena to immutable natural law, 
 I )\ namic Socioloj 
 
 unimpeachable validit] ol all that tl left in 
 
 Christianity when the supernatural element 
 dropped out, I" stop just now ay fur- 
 
 ther and more detailed demon 
 fact would take too long, and uKl 
 
 be going beyond the limit 
 and various consider 
 rhe question belongs rather, 
 further demonstration may be w 
 little work ai>o\ e spok< 
 
 But by pretending 
 the officially prevailing religion, to submit 
 
— 53 — 
 
 solutel} r to the officially established churches, 
 and swallow whole and entire their theological 
 dogma, which dogma their own works render 
 totally incredible to any man of common sense 
 who really gives credence to those works, the 
 Specialist Savans and Philosophical Historians 
 create precisely the most dangerous elements 
 of all in the actual situation. They do now 
 what the casuists did formerly, only for a dif- 
 ferent and now very much wider class. They 
 institute, for the reading world, a combination 
 between a merely external and perfunctory ad- 
 hesion, which no longer deceives any body, and 
 a profound, only half concealed scepticism rela- 
 tive, not merely to the theological scaffolding 
 of Christianity, but to all its sublime moral and 
 social Ideal, to that same sublime social and 
 moral Ideal of which sociological Science, on 
 the contrary, demonstrates irrefragably the essen- 
 tial reality and unimpeachable validity. That 
 merely external adhesion served a valuable, and 
 indeed indispensably necessary, purpose two or 
 three centuries ago, even down to, if not long 
 after, the days of the Lettres provtnciales, not- 
 withstanding that the eminent Author of these, 
 dreaming of a veritable resuscitation of Theology, 
 
— 54 — 
 
 was naturally blind to the fact: but at this 
 
 day it works most fatal mischief, weaken 
 
 the Church instead of 
 
 utterly paralyzing Her for any effective m< 
 
 regulation, even of Her own sincere adl 
 
 and .s<> creating the fatal indifferen 
 
 gion which every where char es our modern 
 
 civilization , preparii it th< I fated 
 
 catastrophe 
 
 II. 
 
 The exposition now compl 
 tions betwen the I rine and R. 
 
 is by no means simply pn 
 subject of to-day's I 
 
 trary, a principal element in its i With- 
 
 out it, it would be in and 
 
 the positive theory of the Middle A. 
 fact, any theory in the smallest tific- 
 
 in regard to this most inter- but miserably 
 
 ill-understood, period. For, instead ol lia\ 
 been a period of darkness, and its civili 
 as compared with the I Roman, a n 
 
 gression, the Middle A.ges did in fact 
 for mankind the g St and ; .Mime p 
 
 greSS ever ael 
 
— 55 — 
 
 The principal source of the false notions that 
 have hitherto prevailed, in regard to this most 
 decisive period of past histon r , consists in the 
 total absence of any rational and consistent 
 conception of what it is that constitutes Human 
 Progress ; and of the supremely decisive relations 
 subsisting between social progress proper and 
 moral progress. The scientific synthesis alone 
 makes clear what it is that constitutes progress, 
 both the social and the moral ; and what is still 
 more important, the real relations between Pro- 
 gress and Order. In the two sentences just pro- 
 nounced, the word ..order*' might be substituted 
 for the word ..progress" (and in the last phrase 
 the two words transposed) without any serious 
 change in the meaning. For it is now demon- 
 strated, that the only real and true progress is 
 that which consists in the development of the 
 Normal Order. While the one eternal moral 
 problem of our Race, has been the subordination 
 of the spontaneously predominant Egotism in our 
 nature, to the Altruism whose prevalence is in- 
 dispensable to our personal unity, its one eternal 
 social aspiration has been its own Unity, 
 end towards which it has constantly, amidst 
 gigantic obstacles, slowly but surely advanced. 
 
In order to see clearly how very far the Middle 
 Ages carried us along this double road, which 
 
 essentially one, for the moral unity and 
 social unity arc at a but two different 
 
 phases oi a ime phenomenon, we D 
 
 keep constantly in view tl the 
 
 spiritual and the temporal, of which this d< 
 sive period \\ the 
 
 one .side, and on the L, built 
 
 up tem which, while in< 
 
 endurance un< then : 
 
 incapable therefo 
 
 tical fruits, did still, in d and funda- 
 
 mental principles, ap] 
 to the Normal Si 1 iuman 
 
 alluded to in the Christian Scriptun the 
 
 Kingdom rth, than 
 
 thin- developed, nay Etnything barely im 
 previously. In tart it was tli,- Sj 
 to modern Thought by the Middle 
 
 alone rendered possible the p 
 
 of the Future state 
 
 with a sufficiently relath - 
 
 ,\nd due allowance tor the then unavoidable ami 
 
 insurmountable hind. -nditions on the • 
 
 hand, and for the modi! 
 
— 57 — 
 
 inevitable by the subsequent acquisitions of 
 positive knowledge, the Middle Ages present 
 us with a complete Synthesis of Human Aspi- 
 rations. All that the Human Race, by its grea- 
 test sages, had dreamed of and longed for as 
 supremely desirable, all that Man has constantly 
 struggled for, and fought for, and cheerfully gone 
 through terrible sufferings to finally insure for his 
 Kind, were all at last in the Middle Ages at- 
 tained, at least in germ and in fundamental 
 principle, but at every point needing for the full 
 realization of the just and necessary practical 
 results, certain conditions not then attainable, 
 conditions which have become attainable only 
 now, or rather, to speak more exactly, in the 
 very near if not absolutely immediate Future ; 
 yet of course not even then, or indeed at any 
 time attainable without due effort, perhaps even 
 heroic effort. Such blessings as we enjoy today 
 cost our Forefathers very heroic effort: if we 
 are no longer capable of such effort, our children 
 must wait for their inheritance, ripe though it be 
 in so many respects, until a nobler generation 
 arise to achieve it. 
 
 The fundamental feature of Feudalism, 
 stripped of technicalities, of merely temporary 
 
accidents of the situation and merely transitional 
 
 characteristics was the conciliation between 
 
 concurrence and independence. 
 
 had a large measure lepend< 
 
 the common 
 
 the general interests, \\ rar- 
 
 chical subordinate ingdownvt 
 
 the monarch all the way I ranks, 
 
 who now, for the first time, ual 
 
 sl,i\ en to nd thru finally 
 
 tial freedom, in which th 
 
 \ ergence w 
 
 represented b I with 
 
 sufficient stri< 
 
 superior. Ihi> was tin- natural n nul 
 
 Roman development, entirely irrespectivi 
 
 the inroads ot barbariai 
 
 taneous transformation ol rora 
 
 ;tate ol conqi ich 
 
 had been accomplished, or at least pn 
 tor. by the Roman Empire. ITie 
 was purely spont >un- 
 
 dest thinker of that 
 
 mally expressed in 
 
 nomenon then 
 
 around him. He could n rm in his own 
 
— 59 — 
 
 mind any sort of conception of it save the most 
 vague and general. It was only the Roman Poet 
 (with that astonishing intuitive insight and fore- 
 sight, long ago observed as characterizing the 
 true poet, but only now explained by positive 
 moral science) who had indicated the veritable 
 destination of the Roman arms, Jo impose upon 
 Man by War the arts of Peace"*) But it is only at 
 
 *) One hears at this day all sorts of talk, and boastings 
 ad nauseam, about Progress: but is not this a rather strange 
 „progress? a Twenty centuries ago, before the advent of Christi- 
 anity even.) men could recognize the destination of war as 
 purely transitional, being no other in fact than to render 
 
 ible the institution of permanent and universal peace. But 
 now, after all our r progress ", war is, if certain current theo- 
 ries are valid, to be eternized by having for its function the 
 extension of the commerce of „the Strong" peoples to the 
 disadvantage of the "Weak ; disadvantage which includes (accor- 
 ding to an unvarying experience) their slow death and ultimate 
 extermination, sole definitive result hitherto, of all permanent 
 contact between our Occidental Civilization, in its actual state 
 of anarchy and demoralization, and any of the Backward Races 
 still subsisting on this Globe. As a highly natural and indeed 
 inevitable correlative of such a ^Progress", all the principles 
 of Christianity, and indeed of morality in any shape, are openly 
 defied, relatively to the collective (or political) action of man- 
 kind, either systematically declared inapplicable, or treated with 
 contempt as „sentimentalism". Meantime a wretched Quackery, 
 that with cynical insolence dares usurp the sacred name of 
 Science, starts up, ready to justify this modern mode of un- 
 mitigated cannibalism, blasphemously dubbing it „Evolution!" 
 And the Christian Churches stand by, shutting their eyes and 
 
— 6o — 
 
 this day, and only by those initiated into i 
 Positive Doctrine, that the full signii of 
 
 the fact thus, as though by inspirati 
 can l)'- fairly app now. n< 
 
 tli.it the light i Lily 
 
 conic, the great majority of minds will fail 
 realize the social h they 
 
 arc themselves unconsciously takin 
 
 In the Middle Ages, [ndustry had not by 
 any ra< tually replace ilti- 
 
 mately definitive form i It 
 
 needed all t : of th lual 
 
 decay <>t the m< 
 current gradual developmei 
 in order to the plishm< this n 
 
 decisive step toward 
 dom of ( rod, in scientific I an] 
 matic reign i A 1 [umanil 
 e\ en then this final and defii 
 of the social activity, piw ed i ible 
 
 without a h is i 
 
 stopping th< 
 cracy, make then 
 
 thin 
 
 ih.it right speedily, unless 
 torn to piec< 
 ved fate, 
 
— 61 — 
 
 an)'' means terminated, but in the midst of which 
 we are still living. The transformation, however, 
 of military activity, from a state of Conquest to 
 a state of Defence, was a most important and 
 indeed indispensable transition; and this tran- 
 sition was virtually , although only spon- 
 taneously, accomplished by the Middle Ages. 
 Until, however, this transition, from being merely 
 spontaneous becomes systematic, by the com- 
 plete social prevalence of the corresponding 
 theory, the chief benefits destined to flow from 
 that great transformation are profoundly com- 
 promised. For aggressive wars, even within 
 the nominal Christendom, remain still possible, 
 although ever more and more costly, ever in- 
 flicting more and more cruel sufferings upon 
 the nations, victors and vanquished alike. They 
 are simply struck with radical and incurable 
 sterility, and ever more and more so, their re- 
 sults having, within our occidental civilization, 
 no reliable permanence whatever, save only in 
 the cases where those results might have been 
 better attained without any war at all. Such 
 wars, within the limits of that modern European 
 or Occidental Civilization, have more and more 
 the peculiarly malignant character which marks 
 
civil wars: they are more and more disorderly 
 and revolutionary in their essential character, 
 and add, more than any thing else in the pur 
 temporal sphere, to the revolutionary agitation 
 already so dangerously charactering our modern 
 society. 
 
 But the Feudo-catholic civilization, could 
 fully effectuate only u ral principle the 
 
 transformation oi conquest in and 
 
 in no wise assure all t; ultima;- 
 
 to be derived from tl iliatiori en per 
 
 sona] independence and social co . which 
 
 was essentially involved in tporal s; 
 
 advantages necessarily reserved i< Normal 
 
 State of Man upon the Karti 
 
 .antic obst now 
 
 working itself out, and a the final result 
 
 irresistibly so. Feudalism introduced, ho 
 especially by its supren in- 
 
 comparable Institution of Chivalry, an in 
 
 amelioration in the relation 
 
 and Interiors, an am. m imi ibly 
 
 greater than had ever been dp 
 
 the most daring of Greek philosophic 
 
 social speculators, and in comparison with which 
 
 the subversive schemes of mod 
 
- 63 - 
 
 simply contemptible. It was purely to Feu- 
 dalism that we owe the fundamental concep- 
 tion on which the normal social order essen- 
 tially reposes ; so far as the purely temporal 
 order is concerned viz: that Allegiance and 
 Protection are reciprocal, principle that ; with 
 all the modern anarchy and disorder, no one 
 has dared openly to gainsay; it is simply ren- 
 dered inefficacious, in the most important cases 
 practically null ; by the absence of any effec- 
 tive spiritual power, with a dogma in any 
 wise applicable to a systematically industrial 
 society. But it was Chivalry, and the ad- 
 mirable moral development due to the Worship 
 of the Virgin Mother, which Chivalry, more 
 even than Catholicism itself so much shackled 
 in its noblest inspirations as this latter is 
 by its dogma, admirably cultivated and deve- 
 loped, and by which in its turn it was itself 
 so much ennobled — it was Chivalry that im- 
 parted to this principle its highest perfection, 
 and without being able to formulate the maxim 
 \>y which the scientific synthesis characterizes 
 this class of social relations, did still better, by 
 furnishing practical illustrations which suggested 
 that maxim to the Great Thinker : Devotedness of 
 
- 6 4 - 
 
 the Strong to flic Weak, veneration of the 11 
 for the Strong. 
 
 The complete realization, however, of the 
 normal conciliation between independence and 
 concurrence can be due only to that other * 
 dition, which the mediaeval civilization has the 
 eternal honor of having >usly revealed 
 
 to Man: the complete separation mni radical ///- 
 dependend spiritual 
 
 temporal. It is only under the 
 versa! Church, fully representing public opini 
 that vast, that imm< which, even 
 
 this day, wholly deprh . 
 in the least d< 
 
 plainly its tend* ne Bnall) 
 
 where supreme, that it will be md 
 
 fully consistent with a national independei 
 
 sternal 
 local autonomy sufficiently I he mod< 
 
 aspirations towap r permit (at b 
 
 tom essentially the same thing 1 ) the detinii 
 
 abandonment of the whole governmental system 
 
 of militarism. But. ^w the one hand, 
 
 dogma is, in practice, irreconcilable with 
 
 effective reparation ot the tw 
 
 withstanding the text of the ne* festan 
 
that seem expressly designed to furnish a dog- 
 matic basis for it ; and notwithstanding also the 
 indisputable fact that the mediaeval Church first 
 gave to the world an actual example of a spir- 
 itual power independent of all the various tem- 
 poral governments, and yet uniting into a one 
 spiritual Family, with a sufficient cohesion to be 
 a complete defence against external attack, and 
 also with a universally respected Umpire in in- 
 terior international difficulties, a considerable 
 number of peoples entirely independent of each 
 other nationally and politically. 
 
 But a theological dogma necessarily pushes 
 a Church that is based upon it, e.ven in spite 
 of the essential spirit of the corresponding Re- 
 ligion (which is far from being absolutely iden- 
 tical, or even necessarily in close harmony, 
 with its dogma) towards a theocratic usurpation, 
 as soon as ever it has sufficiently undisputed 
 prevalence to make such a usurpation possible. It 
 is not in the nature of things, that a priesthood, pro- 
 fessing to speak in the name of an omnipotent God, 
 a God, moreover, supposed to interfere directly, 
 by supernatural and therefore inscrutable means, 
 in the affairs of men, should limit itself strictly 
 to offering counsels, when command is in any- 
 
 5 
 
— 66 — 
 
 wise within its grasp. And moreover to offering 
 counsels which, whether public or private, are 
 to remain fully liable to rejection by those to 
 whom they are addressed, a rejection entir 
 at their own option and on their own sole 
 responsibility, responsibility limited exclusively 
 to the inevitable acceptance of the purely natural 
 consequences following such a r a, and 
 
 also, in fact, to such consequer -ult 
 
 from the direct or supernatural intervenl 
 God Himself Such a limitation is. of cour 
 practical result of the h< 
 
 ration of the tw<> | . which is not only 
 
 the fundamental and indisp* condit 
 
 this day of all highly developed social 
 but the still more in ble condition of all 
 
 profound moral i /at ion. incomparably the n 
 pressing need of our modern occidental civili 
 
 tion. It is a sheer impossibility that any body of 
 men, professing to speak in the name oi such a 
 God should abstain from mand ; 
 
 of limiting themselves purely I 
 
 command has become possible tor them, and 
 
 they have thus behind them an omnip- 
 
 ready to back up their commands by a dip 
 
 interference with the natural order, and tl 
 
to completely crush any attempt at resistance. 
 It is quite impossible that a Priesthood, speaking 
 in the name of a God of inscrutable purposes, 
 who is the immediate superior alike of Pope 
 and of King, should even imagine the possible 
 existence of any obstacle to the employment of 
 of temporal weapons in the enforcement of the 
 Divine Commands, whenever it can in fact by 
 any means procure the use of those weapons 
 for any such purpose. Nay, such an enforcement 
 must needs seem the duty of the Temporal 
 Government. 
 
 And even when the direct interference of 
 the Divine Omnipotence in human affairs, by 
 supernatural means, comes to be pretty generally 
 regarded as essentially fabulous, so generally 
 indeed that the priesthood itself cannot help at 
 least half suspecting that such an appreciation 
 is in accordance with realities, it cannot be in 
 any wise an easy matter for a Priesthood, long 
 habituated to the attitude of command, not only 
 natural but essentially inevitable where there 
 is a real and profound belief in the theological 
 theory of Divine Government, to abandon defin- 
 itively all direct or indirect recourse to tem- 
 poral or material weapons, and limit itself ex- 
 
 5* 
 
— 68 — 
 
 clusively to purely spiritual instrumentalities, 
 
 instrumentalities moral in the double sense of 
 
 the term. The Catholic Church is entitled to v 
 
 much more consideration than she has 
 
 even in the most Catholic countries of our modern 
 
 Europe, at the hands ol the statesmen. illy 
 
 seeing that the only policy they have thus 
 
 been able to oppose to the theo 
 
 <>l that Church is the pur< n invoh 
 
 in a return to th< mt, pre-chri 
 
 — that of the confu in 
 
 the hands of the remporal Ruler. But 
 
 ity, in this its supreme condei 
 
 ence, outside <»t the remporal I 
 
 in the purely practical sphere sub 
 
 of a ^kingdom" which world** 
 
 and whose servants th< 
 
 e, do not use temporal weapons, thos 
 
 force, in the maintenance of tl 
 
 oi their ^kingdom" (higher law destined 
 
 finally to put an end to all fighting, to all 
 
 that hideous barbarism called war* 
 
 ity, in this its supreme charact 
 
 wise liable to extinction, in nly 
 
 avowed hostility of the p 
 
 modern pi d the still more in\< 
 
- 69 - 
 
 even if unavowed, detestation of the openly and 
 systematically retrograde partisans of the actually 
 prevailing system of Temporal Omnipotence. It 
 is the indestructibility of Christianity, in this its 
 essential culmination ; that makes this system so 
 profoundly revolutionary; for it is it, at bottom, 
 which is responsible for the whole of the actual 
 situation. But for it ; all the other difficulties, 
 and they are many and serious, no doubt, 
 would all be surmountable, and even, compara- 
 tively speaking, easily so. 
 
 Modern opinion will certainly every where 
 impose, sooner or later, aided especially by the 
 terrible lessons of experience, the condition 
 which the modern situation, looked at as a 
 w T hole, so imperatively demands, the separation 
 of the spiritual power from the temporal power, 
 first and foremost as this condition is among 
 those which can alone definitively terminate the 
 actual revolutionary state, state moreover that 
 is constantly and surely intensified by the efforts 
 at material compression, indispensable of course, 
 on the part of the temporal governments, as 
 long as we have no socially recognized, genuine 
 and efficacious solution of the present disorder 
 and anarchy. But the Scientific Synthesis protests 
 
— 70 — 
 
 energetically against the purely revolutionary 
 measure, which, on a superficial view of the matter, 
 may seem to be identical with the separation 
 of the two powers, viz that commonly called 
 the Separation of the Church from the State > and 
 which conservatives would be everywhere per- 
 fectly in the right in opposing by every effectual 
 means possible, but which unhappily they aim 
 always do oppose by means tending Infallibly 
 to insure their own failure. For the separal 
 of the two power indispensable a measure 
 
 as the revolutionary ^separation of the chun 
 from the state* is detestable and ruinous*) But 
 
 *) i 
 The sound 13 the maintenance o( the Chnrch l>> pu 
 
 voluntary effort 1 
 the people, especially of tl 
 religious spirit, thai there the movement for tlu- 
 the Church from the 
 
 motive, ll is tl, : the 
 
 people in this regard have in fact n 
 a most admirable revival there 
 even the English ^Society for the 1 
 
 State Control 41 , (whose very name ; on the p. 
 
 authors a remarkable instin sentiment oi the tr 
 
 titic conception) must just me as to 
 
 fairly embrace the separation ot tt 
 
 completely clear its skirts o\ all vest :h a 
 
 radically anti- christian, if not absolute] 
 
 arvism. 
 
the revolutionary measure really means, not the 
 so indispensable restoration of the social prestige 
 and moral energy of the Church, certainly assured 
 result of the sincere and honest separation of 
 the two powers, but the speedy abolition and 
 destruction of the Church and the consequent 
 extirpation of religion. For it essentially consists 
 in depriving Her of such prestige as results 
 from Her recognition by the state, which is far 
 from being absolutely nullified, so far as the 
 peasantry is concerned at all events, by the 
 slavery to the state in which She has at this 
 day to exist, without at the same time giving 
 Her the smallest possible compensation. As 
 regards all the higher classes and the proletariate 
 of the cities, the actual slavery of the Church 
 to the State does no doubt utterly cripple, if 
 not entirely paralyze, Her power for good, and 
 more than any thing else — or at least with 
 only one single exception, itself also due to 
 the confusion of the two powers — intensify 
 the materialistic and atheistic tendencies so un- 
 happily prevalent, and which w^ould alas ! be 
 only too energetic without this aid. She w r ould 
 gain therefore immensely by the real separation 
 of the hvo powers , far more indeed than she 
 
would lose by the revolutionary measure. But 
 that revolutionary measure, while depriv 
 the Church of such prestige as State 
 nition can give Her, in the actual situation 
 indispensable, proposes only to still further in- 
 tensify the usurpation of spiritual prerogati 
 by the state, which is in fact the source of the 
 greatest of all the actual dangers to the 
 of ( )nler in Kurope.*) 
 
 *) I D ul- 
 
 timate result, <>f the absolut 
 in the hands of the 
 
 plainly as tl; : 1 i c h 
 
 could no doubt l' ed with Infallible 
 
 one of our Euro] 
 of imitating the 1< 
 
 Nihilism is greatly ml 
 
 confusion of the two 
 dogma. Bui the Revolutii 
 
 is just th. will 
 
 find, when it 
 
 steps in to reduce th< i 
 
 the true meas 
 
 the confusion of the ti the intei 
 
 and practical atheism, in oi etaphysical Liberalism 
 
 (only a euphonious synonyme for rank Indh 
 
 is even more fatally dangerous in t: than 
 
 the Russian Despotism, while at the same tmi illy 
 
 destructh 
 
 rhe true solution, by the by. tJOD in tin 
 
 o( Russia, does not by any means 
 Europe, in the direct separation of the 
 
- 73 - 
 
 This digression into the very border land 
 of concrete or practical politics, would be quite 
 out of place here were it not that in the actual 
 state of public opinion, and the long and prac- 
 tically unquestioned reign of the fatally revo- 
 lutionary system of Temporal Omnipotence, the 
 modern mind would be unable really to grasp 
 the true significance of that fundamental con- 
 dition of normal social order, the separation of 
 
 of realization every where, is simply impossible for Russia. Russia 
 is very far from being included in our modern Western Civili- 
 zation, and her interference in European politics properly so 
 called , always morally a gross usurpation , is a perpetual 
 menace to her own existence, but for which, in fact, she might 
 after all have escaped the fearful visitation of Nihilism, a cancer 
 in her bosom that is constantly growing. Russia is properly 
 an Asiatic and Oriental Power, not European and Occidental. 
 In Asia, if she can only learn in time where she has to stop, 
 her rule is wholly beneficent, and will assure her a singularly 
 glorious Future. But as to her European possessions, even such 
 as are actually legitimate, her case is unique, and the true 
 solution which it demands is destined , unless the persistent 
 blindness of the Czars ruins her utterly, by precipitating her 
 into a Constitutionalism totally unsuited to her situation and 
 her magnificent possible Future, from which however nothing 
 can save her except that true solution of her present most 
 dangerous situation — to wipe out Nihilism as by a stroke of the 
 pen, and, by a veritably magical transformation, render her, in 
 an incredibly short space of time, the Envied among all nations, 
 while placing her Czar among the very foremost names of all 
 Human History. 
 
— 74 — 
 
 the two powers, and indeed to form a clear and 
 
 distinct conception of a true and genuine pur 
 
 spiritual power, without some such concrete 
 
 illustrations. But it was the service the Middle 
 
 Ages rendered to the Normal Social Order of 
 
 Humanity by the development of this conception, 
 
 however premature may have been th< 
 
 practipa] realization, now at last, I 
 
 tively assured (unless indeed modern society, by 
 
 persisting in the revoluti< mar . 
 
 pieces altogether) which constitutes th 
 
 title of this most decisis rnal 
 
 gratitude and reverent admiration of our I< a 
 
 The inevitable result, ho* the theocratic 
 
 tendencies inexpugnably inherent in any ti. 
 
 logical creed was, in tli< mirable 
 
 mediaeval Catholic Church, that a struj <>se 
 
 between I [er and the remporal 1 ' 
 
 constantly maintained now * 
 
 resulted in the complete subordination, 
 
 say absolute slavery, of 
 
 various Temporal Government 
 
 countries that remain mo 
 
 a subordination accomplished th« illy 
 
 in great part by Catholics £hems< and in 
 
 which Catholii eminent for their pi< 
 
/:> 
 
 to have been subsequently sainted, as in the 
 case of St. Louis of France, have taken an 
 eminent part. When one reflects upon the in- 
 finite blessings that would have flowed out upon 
 all mankind had it only been possible for the 
 eternally glorious Church of a St. Augustine and 
 a Hildebrand, a St. Bernard and an Innocent III, 
 a St. Francis of Assisi and a St. Elizabeth of 
 Hungary, to have gone on unchecked in Her 
 beneficent career, it is impossible not to regret 
 profoundly that, in fact, the development of 
 modern society had to be accompanied, inevi- 
 tably, by a constant and progressive decay of 
 that Church. Not but what Modern Society, when 
 it shall at last have accomplished its destiny: 
 the inauguration of the Normal State of Man 
 upon the Earth, will have been well worth all 
 it will have cost; but how fearful has been that 
 cost! On one side five centuries of utterly 
 useless, more and more bloody and barbarous 
 Wars, becoming finally veritable orgies of 
 fiends ! On the other hand the Terrible Spectre 
 of modern Revolution, now actually looming up 
 into ever more and more hideous proportions, 
 laughing, with its ghastly grin, at all the vain 
 efforts of merely material and physical compres- 
 
- 76 - 
 
 sion, as though to demonstrate, beyond the last 
 possible vestige of doubt, the radical impotence 
 of merely temporal instrumentalities in the spir- 
 itual spherel And who knows how Ion. 
 actual transitionary stato ill of d 
 
 well as countless m . may not ha. 
 
 to last! 
 
 But a Spiritual Power to be able to main- 
 tain itself in Modem ty must 
 pure. It must possess v. 
 talkies of a purely spiritual i 
 
 native force and energy enough to enable it to 
 dispense with any sort 1 from the tem- 
 
 poral Arm. Nay, it must utterly 
 itself all such aid, and - 
 
 smallest \ i iny sanction, I 
 
 any interference whai trm, 
 
 in any direction, within the spiritual 
 
 must have so full and undoubf 
 
 based moreover upon i .in 
 
 its own purely spiritual DM 
 
 alities, inspire the 1 ei 
 
 Government, nothing whatever bi 
 
 fair and free field for their I >n this 
 
 condition alone, can a church be cntir- 
 free from the last tincture ^i tin- 
 
// 
 
 and so guaranteed, by her own character and 
 principles, against that deplorable conflict with 
 the Temporal Power which, more than any thing 
 else, save only the closely allied tendency to 
 the absorption of material wealth, certainly far 
 more even than the merely theoretical under- 
 mining of Her dogma, put the noble and vene- 
 rable Catholic Church, unhappily, into irrevocable 
 conflict with Modern Opinion. 
 
 But the failure of the grand and glorious 
 enterprize of the mediaeval Church, which at 
 one time seemed so very near to the definitive 
 solution of the supreme problem of the Human 
 Unity, was by no means due exclusively to 
 the faults and defects of that eternally venerable 
 Church , whom all true Positivists sincerely 
 revere and love, in the midst of all Her sad 
 decay. The persistence of the Catholic Church 
 even to this day, in spite of the so profound 
 discredit cast upon her dogma, is, on the con- 
 trary, a decisive proof of the impossibility of 
 either setting aside the problem unsolved, leaving 
 it to rest for ever in its actual state, without 
 any solution at all, and an equally decisive proof 
 of the impossibility of finding any other solution 
 than the reorganization of a purely spiritual 
 
power, on a basis fairly irrefragable, and ca- 
 pable, therefore, of universal extension , thus 
 rendering finally possible, and therefore defini- 
 tively assuring, the complete separation and 
 profound mutual independence of the two pow- 
 ers. But Feudalism, although it had spontaneously 
 transformed military activity from conquering 
 to defensive, was still an essentially military 
 social State, and no essentially military 
 is compatible with a radical separation between 
 
 the tWO powers. No Ku' sed 
 
 upon militarism is willing, it he can help it, to 
 
 tolerate the exist an independent chur< 
 
 A Priest who may invite him to moralize his 
 
 own action, supremely as ti 
 society may need such moralization, will ne< 
 sarily be distasteful to him. All military action 
 tends so profoundly to develope t' e ot 
 
 arbitrary power in the chiefs, and to habiti; 
 the people themselves to it hat no 
 
 military Government will ever be willing, or 
 even able, to tolerate a Church that is not. 
 one means or another, in more or 
 slavery to itself. The frank and 
 nition of the principle of the separation of 
 two powers, and the definitive abandonment of 
 
— 79 — 
 
 the barbarous system of militarism (system 
 certainly barbarous relatively to our modern 
 occidental civilization, in which its action is 
 necessarily at one and the same time retrograde 
 and revolutionary), must needs be so essentially 
 simultaneous as to be virtually a one act. For 
 the whole system of militarism is in such utter 
 antagonism to all the best and noblest tenden- 
 cies of the modern spirit, as well as to the 
 whole of the spirit and tendencies of Christianity, 
 that it could not possibly subsist a fortnight, in 
 the presence of a real freedom of discussion. 
 The cause of civil and religious liberty, and 
 that of the separation and mutual independence 
 of the two powers, are in fact absolutely iden- 
 tical. It is ignorance of this fact, or what is the 
 same thing of the true meaning of the word 
 ^liberty", that is one of the greatest dangers, 
 perhaps the chief danger, to European peace at 
 this day, and the incessant irritant of our revo- 
 lutionary state. For the true Human Liberty is 
 not the liberty of tigers and gorillas, the ab- 
 sence of all rule, of all systematic regulation. 
 The very contrary, indeed. The true Human 
 Liberty never exists till it is systematically in- 
 stituted. "What exists spontaneously is quite 
 
another thing, any thing indeed but this. Genuine, 
 real liberty is certainly not merely the al 
 of a dominating Power which, simply bi 
 it is power, that is I orce, b< 
 
 therefore it can imp* elf, pretends 
 
 >reme judge o\ every thii 
 thing ; what is true and what 
 
 right and what is wr what people 
 
 may say or write Or print, and what they D 
 
 not Bay or write or print, that pretends, or 
 
 least that would lain pretend, tO what 
 
 people shall think and what the I think. 
 
 Were the question put in i 
 any one of the 6 it peopl 
 
 our modern \\ the properly 
 
 European en inly pro 
 
 to be the practically unanimous convi< I 
 that people , that such a raiment would 
 
 constitute the complete negat the n 
 
 elementary Freedom , m universally 
 
 recognized at this d and 
 
 That, however, which 
 
 ual revolutionary and 
 
 its danger, is, that it I und< 
 
 and 
 stood, that the m 
 
by violence, of such a Government even as that 
 just indicated, would of itself do little or nothing 
 to insure a real Liberty. For it is a positivist 
 maxim — and that is the same as to say a 
 demonstrable and rationally undeniable principle 
 — that no Society exists without Government. But 
 as, on the other hand, no Government can exist 
 without a sufficient foundation in public opinion, 
 where there is a state of opinion such as to permit of 
 the existence of a radically despotic government, 
 systematic negation of all rational liberty, of all 
 true human dignity, where for instance the people 
 prefer not to have the trouble and responsibility 
 of thinking for themselves, the only real remedy 
 is in the modification of opinion, and the awak- 
 ening of the public conscience to a more dig- 
 nified attitude. Where there exists a sufficiently 
 free discussion, such modifications of opinion as 
 are really necessary naturally come about, if 
 not quite spontaneously, at least so gradually 
 as not to involve the smallest shock, and more- 
 over without any injustice towards vested in- 
 terests, even those that depend on the abuses 
 to be modified. But where there is no provision 
 for the peaceful and orderly and therefore free 
 development of opinion, the really inevitable 
 
— 82 — 
 
 modifications must needs come about with more 
 or less suddenness, the efforts to prevent them 
 tending in fact, and at last tendin >lv, 
 
 to produce a violent explosion. It is certainly 
 not an energetic Tempo torship thai 
 
 necessarily dangerous either to 1 i 1 > « 
 or to progress, die ( 
 true type, accord 
 
 Modern Polity, abundantly p «*r- 
 
 g-etic dictatorship, in the hand illy 
 
 and intellectually eminent i tble 
 
 profoundly 
 two powers, that 
 
 freedom <>t d if not 
 
 solutely identical i irily impl] 
 
 other), would be, in the i lern 
 
 spiritual anarchy, in md 
 
 the most pr nment, the m 
 
 really Favorable to the true Human I 
 well as the best guarantee of 
 But there is no reliable 
 ( >rder, where there is w 
 
 tor rational liberty, an OUnd r- 
 
 Human Dignity, both implied in and both a 
 tely demanding the sysfeemati 
 the principle of the separat tual 
 
- 83 - 
 
 power from the temporal power. Anarchical 
 
 Doctrines are inherently suicidal, alike in the 
 
 political sphere and in the moral sphere, never 
 
 so absolutely certain to break down, however 
 
 contradictory the expression may seem to be, 
 
 as just when the} 7 are to all appearance in the 
 
 very act of succeeding triumphantly. Where, 
 
 moreover, that complete negation of all rational, 
 
 all properly Human Liberty and Human Dignity, 
 
 the concentration of the two powers in the 
 
 hands of the temporal government, actually 
 
 exists, and with the real concurrence of the 
 
 people, the situation will not be mended in the 
 
 least by the infusion of no matter how large 
 
 a dose of Democratic Institutions. So far as true 
 
 liberty and human dignity are concerned, it 
 
 would not mend the matter, nay, it would make 
 
 it worse, for the usurping temporal government 
 
 to be based entirely on democratic institutions. 
 
 For practically that would necessarily mean 
 
 simply the unlimited and totally irresponsible 
 
 sway of the Plutocracy. 
 
 True Liberty, the veritably Human Liberty, 
 
 requires, in fact/ to sum up in few words this most 
 
 indispensable theory, basis of all genuine Social 
 
 Order and still more of all profound and dignified 
 
 6* 
 
_ 84 - 
 
 Moral Order, the free action of a government 
 in harmony with the social situation, whose 
 power is correlative to the social function it 
 fulfils. A practical power corresponding to, 
 and efficiently directing, the real and actual 
 practical activity; a theoretical authority in 
 harmony with the real beliefs of t' pie, 
 
 capable therefore of devel in the public 
 
 mind and heart, a high and < her moral 
 
 ideal, rendering impossible tl dal, 
 
 repeated more than Once durr 
 
 centuries, of up on th< .1 sum: 
 
 an unutterable moral b; 
 the same time all the noblest human aspir 
 indeed all that is really virt pat- 
 
 riotic and honest in the 
 not merely as dan. 
 meriting tortures and death. to wit 
 spectacle we ^\^ not, unhappily, have I 
 
 even to the days of the Christian Q 
 
 the times of the Caligulas and t 
 The spiritual power nui clu- 
 
 sively by means really appropr 
 opment of solid intellectual i 
 the highest moral sentiments, rhe smallest li 
 inable employment of brut< 
 
- 85 - 
 
 of Religion, and especially by or on behalf of 
 the Priesthood itself, is even more fatal to moral- 
 ity and social order, to human dignity and 
 therefore to all real human virtue ; than the 
 usurpation of spiritual functions by the tem- 
 poral government.*) 
 
 *) There is yet another explanation indispensable at this 
 point, in order to the complete appreciation of this grand 
 principle of the separation of the two powers, the systematic 
 development of which is incomparably the greatest service ever 
 rendered to mankind by Positive Science. While the normal 
 spiritual power expounds sociological science, the grand general 
 principles underlying the social existence and the spontaneous 
 progress of our race, and therefore indicates the lines of 
 direction which a wise statesmanship must needs follow, 
 furnishing that statesmanship with the abstract principles 
 so to speak of its art, it does not in the least degree 
 pretend to indicate the immediate measures appropriate to 
 any particular situation. It recognizes the exclusive competency 
 of the practical statesman in regard to all questions of practical 
 application in the political sphere proper, even of the principles 
 which sociological science has ever so fully demonstrated. The 
 supremely dominant question in practical politics is always 
 that of opportunity, and on that it does not pretend to have 
 any competency at all. According to the scientific synthesis 
 all questions of practical politics are in the exclusive com- 
 petence, as also the exclusive responsibility, of the practical 
 statesman; so that if this statesman decides that, in the country 
 the political direction of which is in his hands, the time has 
 not come for permitting the public exposition of the scientific 
 synthesis, the competent positivist theorician will certainly not 
 breathe the faintest whisper of protest. Even on points decided 
 by the practical statesman in direct opposition to counsels he 
 has offered in the name of science, the positivist theorician 
 
— 86 — 
 
 But the Middle Ages prepared for the nor- 
 mal state of man upon the earth still more deci- 
 sively yet by the admirable moral culture which 
 the Catholic Church actually did institute, moral 
 culture, however, essentially impossible without 
 the separation of the two powers and the suf- 
 
 will be the first to let tbe >n to 
 
 tin- practical authority 
 the wisdom or anwisdom »>t the 
 
 Judgment th<- positivist theorician would be very ill-advised in- 
 deed to n ish to forestaL I 
 i ontrary, on which the fnl 
 \>\k\ alence <»i the I 
 It is just bu< li judgments thai 1 
 thesi 
 
 I' oi the bch iological theorician 
 of practical politics would 
 to undertake, on the 
 
 to set asid< the ezpei tain and ship 
 
 himself. A statesman who rejected tl the 
 
 bcm nee oi th« poj 
 experiem iptain who. in th 
 
 Bcience, declined the nse of tin 
 and celestial maps, and mply to 1 
 
 acquired skilL I lu- hen kin \\ onld 
 
 to one o\ coming safely into port, while the presutnptn 
 Astronomer would certain!] 
 
 from shipwreck only by --till m ptly roundering in the 
 
 open 
 
 Meantime the difficulties that beset the 
 in the fulfilment o\ his so indh this 
 
 day so great, and tantly in< that it is the in- 
 
 variable duty of every well-instructed mind. I 
 
- 8 7 - 
 
 ficient independence of the spiritual power. In 
 spite of a dogma altogether unsuited to the end, 
 giving rise to obstacles and hindrances of all 
 sorts, the Catholic Priesthood, with an admirable 
 empirical wisdom, developed especially in the 
 various Religious Orders, that arose from time 
 
 in its power to diminish, never any thing to add to them. The 
 accomplishment of the spontaneous progress is, in reality, so 
 much better assured than are the supremely fundamental needs of 
 Order, in the actual situation of to-day, that the wise policy is 
 that which seeks before all things stability, and would fain make 
 the inevitable modifications as gradual as possible, avoiding simply 
 the blind resistance which renders violent explosion inevitable. 
 And as to the positivist propagande, it ought to be introduced 
 and encouraged only there where it will tend, and so far as it 
 will tend, to the pacification of the public mind, in a word 
 to the maintenance of tranquillity, object of supreme importance 
 to-day, or on the other hand, to pave the way for modifications 
 foreseen to be finally inevitable, and so, in both cases alike, to 
 lighten the task of the Temporal Ruler. For the Governing 
 Classes themselves, however, a knowledge of sociological science 
 may have an importance of the gravest character even forth- 
 with. It is, however, only among the central population of the 
 Occident, whose Initiative in the grand movement of the Pro- 
 gress of Civilization nothing can annul, initiative at this day 
 indeed more manifest than at any former period, that the Posi- 
 tivist Propagande (save only so far as the religious side of it 
 is concerned, as the satisfaction of a purely personal moral 
 need among a very limited class, and as a calming, pacifying 
 influence among a class very much wider) is not only fully 
 opportune, but of urgent necessity, even among the whole mass 
 of the people, in the great cities especially. It must be manifest 
 to every well-informed mind that, however urgently important 
 
— 88 — 
 
 to time to accomplish reforms rendered indis- 
 pensable by the incurable vices of the dogma, 
 effected a culture and development of the nobler 
 sentiments of our common human nature, that 
 challenges still the enthusiastic admiration of 
 every soul in any wise capable of appreciating 
 them. This moral culture, greatly aided by the 
 noble institution of Chivalry, and its so charac- 
 teristic worship of the Virgin Mother, was time 
 and again defeated, relatively to the clergy itself 
 especially, by the theocratic aspirations and 
 corrupting temporal ambitions engendered by 
 the dogma in the chiefs of the secular priest- 
 hood, but' most of all by that inexhaustible 
 source of corruption and demoralization for any 
 clergy, its material wealth, the development of 
 which the strikingly severe denunciations of 
 the Christian scriptures could not prevent, but 
 which suffices, even alone, to render utterly 
 inevitable the decay and moral paralysis into 
 which this grand and venerable Catholic Church 
 has fallen at this day. Nothing can efficiently 
 
 for the peace, good order and prosperity of all Europe, may 
 be the Inauguration of the Positive Worship of Humanity, that 
 Worship ran by no possibility be inaugurated any where 
 outside of the City of Paris, irrevocably the universal Metro- 
 polis of Humanity. 
 
protect any Priesthood whatever from this 
 utterly fatal source of decay, (far more practically 
 decisive even than the theoretical undermining 
 of the dogma), except the systematic prevalence 
 of the principle of the separation of the two 
 powers, which, pushed to its just and logical 
 ultimate result, effectually debars the priesthood 
 from the possession of any material wealth what- 
 soever, even from the legal ownership of its 
 own Temples and Schools and its own sacerdotal 
 residences. 
 
 The double fact on which, according to Po- 
 sitive Science all religious Culture really de- 
 pends, is, first, the general biological law that 
 all living organs develope by exercise while they 
 tend towards atrophy by inaction; and secondly 
 that the expression of benevolent sentiments and 
 of the disinterested sympathies constitutes just 
 such an exercise, and one that is constantly op- 
 tional. That any such basis for religious exer- 
 cises was inconceivable, and so remains moreover, 
 under a theological dogma, does not alter the 
 fact, nor render any the less real the admirable 
 results obtained by religious exercises in the 
 long past, although instituted under the fostering' 
 guidance of theological ideas, then so natural to 
 
— 90 — 
 
 man, results in fact due to the above biological 
 natural law. Nothing is to-day more important 
 than that the modern mind, however bent it 
 may be upon emancipating itself from theo- 
 logical beliefs, should learn to appreciate the 
 magnificent results attained by the Middle Ages 
 in this sphere of moral culture, and cease to 
 confound the moral culture itself with the fables 
 upon which it was in the past dogmatically 
 based, and then inevitably so. Our supreme 
 need is to get back, at all events, the moral 
 culture, however different may be the dogmatic 
 foundation on which in the future it will have 
 to repose. The very foundation of a rational 
 appreciation of the actual social situation, con- 
 sists in a more just view than commonly prevails 
 of this so decisive period, the Middle Ag 
 resplendent as it is with moral and religious 
 glory. For thus only can be restored that his- 
 toric sentiment without which all real social 
 Order, and at least equally all real social Pro- 
 gress, are eternally impossible. There can in 
 fact be no reliable progress until the conception 
 of Progress is systematically linked with that 
 of Order. That again can result only from the 
 demonstration of the Present as the natural 
 
— 91 — 
 
 product of the Past, the anti-historic spirit of 
 recent centuries being the negation of the 
 very progress about which so many empty 
 boasts are being made and so much un- 
 mitigated cant uttered. For the only Future 
 really possible is that which results from the 
 prolongation of the same lines of development 
 as are revealed by the Past of onr Race, re- 
 garded as leading up naturally to the Present; 
 while the competent study of that Past, from 
 this point of view, necessarily results in a veri- 
 table demonstration of the Human Future upon 
 the Earth, and so puts a decisive end to all 
 sorts of disordered dreams, while giving fullest 
 satisfaction to all sane aspirations. 
 
 To fully appreciate, however, the sublime 
 phenomena presented to us by this truly heroic 
 period of religion and morality, we must atten- 
 tively consider the practical result that had in- 
 variably followed from the confusion of the two 
 powers under the ancient Theocracies, confusion 
 then no doubt inevitable, neither the theological 
 dogma, nor a purely military temporal govern- 
 ment, being consistent with their real and sin- 
 cere separation and necessary mutual inde- 
 pendence. 
 
— 92 — 
 
 The Theocracies ; even the pure theocracies 
 under the Conservative Polytheism ; always tended 
 finally to the subordination of the priesthood to 
 the military caste. We see the same again 
 under the Mosaic or monotheistic Theocracy. 
 To punish His own chosen people for their re- 
 peated rebellion against Him, God gave them 
 a King: that was, naturally enough, the way 
 in which the Hebrew Theocracy recorded its 
 own defeat. According to the theological con- 
 ception King and priest was each alike the 
 representative of the supreme God or Gods : 
 while moreover the very Ideal of the theological 
 theory is the unlimited sway of personal caprice. 
 Under the scientific conception , Righteousness 
 is regarded as necessarily in accordance with 
 the Will of God because it is Righteousness: 
 under the theological conception, Righteousnc 
 and sometimes also the most revolting Unright- 
 eousness, have to be regarded as Righteousness 
 because they are declared to be in accordance 
 with the will of God, an accordance, however, 
 utterly indemonstrable. And so when, finally, 
 the ideal moral perfection, the Infinite Goodm 
 became the supreme attribute of the Deity, and 
 the fear of God, which was. according to the 
 
— 93 — 
 
 ancient Prophet the beginning of wisdom, be 
 gan to transform itself into a filial love destined 
 to cast out the fear, the anthropomorphic modi- 
 fication was so decisive as already to presage 
 the advent of the one definitive conception of 
 Humanity. But the Warrior was a so much better 
 representative of the unlimited sway of purely 
 personal caprice than the Priest, who was al- 
 ways seeking, as for as the existing conditions 
 of positive knowledge would permit, for an Ideal 
 Perfection, that the King always finally won, 
 in spite of all the efforts of systematic Wisdom, 
 his supremacy over the Pontiff. It was under 
 Catholicism only, that the Normal Order could 
 give a first distinct intimation of its fundamental 
 characteristic. The complete confusion of the 
 two powers, which is the very ideal of Monarchy 
 in the sociological sense of this term, had always 
 brought about so intense a concentration of 
 AVealth and Power that a profound corruption 
 was generated in he very heart of the sockil 
 body, corruption which necessarily resulted, as 
 all moral corruption must do when sufficiently 
 developed, in social death. In this abyss, inevi- 
 table under such conditions, perished one after 
 another of the ancient Theocracies, Egyptian, 
 
- 94 — 
 
 Assyrian, Babylonian, and we know not how 
 many more still earlier which have left not even 
 a name behind them. It was only the Moslem 
 regeneration which preserved the Hindoo civil- 
 ization from total disruption. While in our 
 modern Occidental Civilization, since the decisive 
 triumph of the system of temporal omnipotence, 
 relatively to our modern post-christian civilization 
 so profoundly revolutionary, it is the resurrection 
 of the Sardanapalian Ideal, of the Getting the 
 Having and the Enjoying, which, in so profound 
 harmony with the spontaneously predominant 
 energy of our egotist and animal instincts, is at 
 bottom the supreme danger now menacing our 
 very existence. For in reality Human Society 
 is based upon the gradually developing predom- 
 inance of the social sympathies over the egotist 
 and animal instincts. The vital Principle of 
 society is Love: and the notable scheme of our 
 modern „Liberalism u — which word is only a 
 euphonic veil for an enervating and desolating 
 Individualism — scheme for dispensing with 
 this vital principle of all Religion and of all 
 really human Moral Existence, andtherefore of all 
 Society in any wise capable of endurance, and sub- 
 stituting in its place an ingeniously contrived pon- 
 
— 95 — 
 
 deration of material interests, is doomed to a 
 radical and richly deserved failure. The sooner 
 this fact is distinctly apprehended and fully 
 understood the better for us all, and especially 
 for those on whom the social and political 
 responsibility rests, for our governing classes. 
 No doubt the Church, both in its ancient trunk 
 and in its modern offshoots, does perfectly un- 
 derstand it already. But with its hands and feet 
 in irons, what can it do? It is to knock off 
 those fetters and those manacles (including the 
 self-imposed — perhaps especially these) that 
 is the supremely important aim to-day, one 
 that, with a little serious and unprejudiced 
 meditation, must necessarily command the ener- 
 getic concurrence of every really thoughtful 
 mind; aim to which at all events all the Posi- 
 tivist Religious Propagande ought to be system- 
 atically subordinated. 
 
 The institution of a morality independent 
 of and superior to mere legality, which, pre- 
 saged as in fact it had been many centuries 
 earlier, was the fundamental characteristic of 
 Christianity, and the practical development of 
 which, and in a manner supremely admirable, 
 was the greatest service of all accomplished on 
 
- 96 - 
 
 behalf of our Race by the mediaeval civilization 
 rendered possible a most energetic reaction 
 against this ever -besetting , but worse than 
 bestial Sardanapalian Ideal: the brutes fulfil their 
 destiny, but man, in persisting in a career of 
 sensuality and selfishness, tramples his into the 
 mire and mud. The fundamental constitution of 
 our individual nature, however, renders this 
 ideal, worse than bestial though it be, our eter- 
 nally besetting danger; for if the egotist and 
 animal instincts had not a very decisive predom 
 imince of spontaneous energy over the social 
 sympathies, there would be wanting, especially 
 in the absence of any systematic conception of 
 our real nature and destiny, the indispensable 
 guarantee for the conservation of our personal 
 existence; without which conservation neverthe- 
 less, society itself must come to an end Bat without 
 a powerful reaction against the spontaneously 
 dominant egotism, society equally perishes, 
 although from an opposite tendency, that to- 
 wards sensual corruption. It was just this ele- 
 ment in the teachings of the Xazarenes, that 
 commended this sect to the great St. Paul, 
 when he spontaneously felt the need of some 
 new regenerative influence in the Greco-Roman 
 
— 97 — 
 
 World, to counteract the degrading moral ten- 
 dencies of the Greek civilization, and at the 
 same time saw plainly, that a monotheistic basis 
 was indispensable for any influence that could 
 then be sufficiently energ'etic. In the teachings 
 of Jesus, the hostility to material accumulations 
 was radical and absolute : the rich man was, as 
 such, profoundly at enmity with God; he must 
 part with all his individual wealth, and bring 
 every thing into the common treasury of the 
 family of the saints, as the fundamental con- 
 dition of his admission into the Kingdom of 
 God, which was to be forthwith established upon 
 the Earth The radically communist character of 
 the Gospels, and the other Christian sacred 
 Books, abundantly justified the wise precaution 
 of the Catholic Church, in withholding them from 
 the undirected study and comments of the laity. 
 Not because there would be any danger of the 
 Communist Ideal's having any widespread prac- 
 tical prevalence. The system of a common 
 ownership of all material possessions, beyond 
 articles of strictly personal use, served an ines- 
 timable purpose, an end of incalculably high 
 social value, in the case of the monastic insti- 
 tutions, during the development of the Feudo- 
 
Catholic civilization, however intolerable the abus- 
 es those institutions may have afterwards devel- 
 oped; and even now, within certain limited spheres 
 of the kind, that system may not be without its 
 use. But that system is conciliable only with a 
 very pristine stage of social development; as 
 the basis of the common social life. A people 
 subjected to a crushing despotism, which utterly 
 debars them from participation in any larger 
 social life, may find in such a system a certain 
 material defence, and even a narrowly limited 
 play for the social sentiments. Rut, save in some 
 such conditions, it is utterly inadmissible. Radi- 
 cally inconsistent with every kind of progress, 
 because radically irreconcileable with any kind 
 of freedom, it deprives life of all stimulus, and 
 tends towards an utterly unendurable ennui. All 
 attempts to artificially institute such a system, 
 made under a regime of social and political 
 liberty that gives free play to such experiments, 
 utterly break down after a very short ex- 
 perience. The same system imposed by tor 
 as it could be only by a political surprise, would 
 quite certainly come to the same end, only more 
 speedily, making the experiment, as an experi- 
 ment, worthless. No doubt the actual state of 
 
— 99 — 
 
 our modern European or Western Civilization, 
 does expose us to this, and all sorts of other 
 surprises. But that which was at stake in the 
 early days of Christianity, was the moral culture 
 capable of being evoked from the Xazarene 
 teaching, and all the rest of that admirable 
 Feudo-catholic civilization we are this day con- 
 templating. 
 
 This Catholic moral culture, however, was 
 also in its turn directed — as indeed all moral- 
 ities, properly so-called, all above the most 
 elementary (or rather the merely spontaneous, 
 due simply to the bare fact of social existence), 
 have necessarily had to be — against the same 
 danger, essentially consisting, in fact, in the un- 
 checked domination in our individual life of the 
 nutritive instinct and the sexual instinct, the two 
 lowest of our egotist and animal instincts, and 
 therefore by far the most energetic. These two, 
 among the seven impulsions which constitute 
 the lower side of our individual nature, are 
 spontaneously so much the most energetic, that 
 the whole question of the moral regeneration 
 and purification of that nature, and therefore of 
 the development of the normal social harmony, 
 depends on the surmounting of the immense 
 
 7* 
 
100 
 
 spontaneoUvS predominance of these two closely al- 
 lied, although often practically divergent, instincts. 
 The triumphant success of the mediaeval church, 
 in both regards, was something unspeakably 
 admirable, especially in view of the utter want 
 of adaptation in the dogma to the end that 
 needed attainment, and that w T as in fact to so 
 eminent a degree attained. There is no shadow 
 of ground for imagining the mediaeval moral 
 culture destined to any ultimate failure, or for 
 supposing any such failure in any wise possible, 
 had it been instituted on the dogmatic basis of 
 conceptions capable of retaining their hold upon 
 men's beliefs. In relation to both these instincts, 
 on the contrary, the successes attained were 
 most decisive, and indeed glorious. 
 
 What phenomena have ever been developed 
 in human society, that can surpass in sublimity 
 those obtained by the Catholic Church, in the 
 twelfth and thirteenth centuries, in repression 
 of the nutritive instinct? All the circumstan* 
 and social conditions favored the worst abu> 
 Manners were rough and uncultured, unless in 
 the returning Crusaders, already corrupted, and 
 with faith broken down. And vet we see the 
 Clarisses and the third Order of St. Franc 
 
drawing into their ranks the sons and daughters 
 of monarchs and reigning dukes, and developing 
 far and wide, among the great and the mighty 
 and the wealthy, a veritable passion for poverty. 
 And in regard to the sexual instinct, the triumph 
 was even more decisive still, as being still more 
 difficult to obtain. It was among the great and 
 and the mighty, also, that were developed those 
 very remarkable chaste marriages, that might 
 have grown, with due systematic encouragement, 
 into a grand and permanent institution, with in- 
 calculably beneficent results, under the unspeak- 
 ably admirable Worship of the Virgin Mother, 
 so greatly fostered by, and so immensely aiding 
 to develope and to ennoble, the Institution of 
 Chivalry. Of course the specific practical results 
 were marred by the absolute spirit of theologism, 
 which at every point tends to defeat the moral 
 culture, first poisoning its very foundation prin- 
 ciple and then perverting its practical reactions.*) 
 
 *) The incurable tendency of Theological Dogma, becoming 
 only intensified in this its period of decay, to betray and finally 
 sacrifice the Religion built up on its foundation, is remarkably 
 manifested, both as to kind and degree, among the Protestant 
 Sects. The so-called Reformation brought about, no doubt, a 
 certain recrudescence of theologism, ultimating now-a-days in 
 some curious phenomena, especially in the development of 
 a fetichistic worship of the Bible, which, as so much paper, 
 
— 102 — 
 
 But the immense success of the Culture as 
 such remains beyond all possible challenge or 
 doubt ; eternal source of highest hopes for 
 the Human Future. The moral culture is, in 
 reality, simply a natural development, although 
 needing to be made systematic; development 
 
 printed in a certain fashion, and in a peculiar style of calf- 
 binding, constitutes, especially in the United States of America, 
 a sort of Idol, whose worship is not one whit more elevating 
 than that of the metallic Idols furnished by the Christian 
 manufacturers of the English Town <>t Birmingham, and the 
 Christian merchants o\~ English seaports, to our fellow men in 
 the more backward stages o\ social development, furnished, 
 too, along with whiskey and other worse and more deadly 
 poisons that cannot even be named, (some Bibles being of course 
 thrown in), at the cannon's mouth, in the name of B Progi 
 and „ Civilization**. Bnt as to the contents o( the same Bible, 
 in the more and more rare cases in which it is actually read, it> 
 communistic and other moral tendencies are completely neutral- 
 ized by a process oi' pretended spiritualization, the honest 
 name of which is simply mystification, and which pro< 
 really, to use the biblical phraseology, ..make the word of God 
 of none effect by the traditions' 1 of the theologians. This mode 
 also of utterly sacrificing Christian Religion to a professedly 
 Christian Dogma, needs also to be brought to a complete and 
 immediate end, if our modern society is not to perish incon- 
 tinently in a slough oi unfathomable corruption, which X 
 paper exposures and parliamentary or other Commissions 
 Inquiry can do nothing to cure, but may easily make worse. In- 
 putting the .Public Conscience on a wrong scent, especially in 
 leading it to trust to legal remedies, necessarily altogether 
 illusory, and so diverting it from the only real remedy, the in- 
 dispensably necessary rejuvenation of Religion. 
 
— 103 — 
 
 of the higher side of our nature relatively to 
 the lower — development of the noble spirit 
 of self-sacrifice, spirit which still furnishes 
 triumphant manifestations, most unmistakeable, 
 of the fact that it cannot die out from among 
 men ; whatever may become of the theological 
 beliefs with which the culture of that spirit was 
 formerly linked. The question is being forced, 
 now, upon the attention of the thoughtful and 
 conscientious, within quite as much as without 
 the pale of the Christian Churches , Catholic 
 and Protestant, whether it be really the fact 
 that theological beliefs have become, at last, 
 directly hostile to the development of this truly 
 divine spirit, which six centuries ago was so 
 admirably developed under their banner. It de- 
 pends upon the attitude which the Heads and 
 Leaders of the Christian Churches henceforth 
 take, under the so entirely altered relations 
 between Science and Religion, what answer the 
 really thoughtful, conscientious and sincere will 
 finally have to make to this question. 
 
 In order to direct the actual conduct' under 
 the impulsion of this noble and truly divine 
 spirit, positive science, Sociological Science, is 
 no doubt necessary; it alone indicates with 
 
— 104 — 
 
 sufficient exactitude the normal state of man 
 upon the Earth, objective aim of all wise devo- 
 tedness. Still more is sociological science ex- 
 clusively competent to indicate the means by 
 which ends, ever so universally desired and longed 
 for by a highly developed moral sense and 
 genuine Christian sentiment, can be securely and 
 peacefully attained, without shock, material or 
 moral, and without economical derangement. 
 But it is only the atheistic Specialist Science 
 and the pure Quackeries that under the specialist 
 regime can so easily impose themselves on the 
 modern mind, committing fearful ravages — the 
 ^Modern Science" in whose adulterous embra- 
 the Church is forced, in Her actual alliance with 
 the State, to live, to the ruin of Her own moral 
 energy and Her efficacy on behalf of social order, 
 — that has ever dared, in its sacrilegious irrup- 
 tions into this sacred sphere, topropound theories, 
 like those of the Political Economists for in- 
 stance, in open defiance of the most fundamental 
 principles of Christian Morality., But so magical 
 and irresistible a power is wielded at this day 
 by Positive Science, that a pure quackery, that 
 has nothing* of science about it but its bare 
 name, and that an impudent usurpation, was 
 
— 105 — 
 
 able, for a whole generation and more, to strike 
 dumb the Christian Churches by the mere terror 
 of its usurped name, no one daring to utter a 
 whisper of protest against its rank and blas- 
 phemous atheisms. The Scientific Synthesis, on 
 the contrary, is in so profound harmony with 
 all the Christian Ideal, that there are but few 
 elements indeed in the Positive Regime, or sys- 
 tem of practical life logically resulting from the 
 sociological theories, which might not, with the 
 utmost consistency, and with scarcely more than 
 a shadow of modification, be adopted by any 
 Christian Church, and enforced by the precepts 
 of its own dogma upon its disciples and ad- 
 herents. Nay, one cannot be really faithful to 
 the Gospel Teachings, really faithful to the 
 glorious traditions of the Mediaeval Church, 
 without thus more or less appropriating the 
 positive regime. Certainly no enlightened 
 Christian would, in this nineteenth century, dis- 
 sipate the material treasures entrusted by the 
 Divine Providence (or by Humanity) to his 
 keeping and administration, (the essential fact 
 remains, unchanged by differences in our human 
 phraseology), treasures Avhose social efficacy 
 demands at once a high degree of concentration 
 
— io6 — 
 
 and a strictly individual appropriation, either on 
 his own frivolous amusement, to say nothing of 
 sensual indulgences which to the true Christian, as 
 much as to the religious Positivist, are a scorn and 
 an abomination, nor on the other hand in an unwise 
 improvident, and insulting so-called charitv, that 
 every one knows now to have no other result, 
 than the still further impoverishment and moral 
 degradation of the poor. The intelligent Christian, 
 at the end of this nineteenth century, in recog- 
 nizing himself as simply the steward of his Lord 
 and Saviour in respect to his material wealth, 
 just as much as the Positivist in recognizing him- 
 self directly and frankly as the steward of Hu- 
 manity, will so administer his wealth as to tend, 
 in the highest degree, to Social and Moral 
 Order and Harmony, and thus indirectly to the 
 highest well-being of the whole Human Race. 
 Nor certainly would that same intelligent Chris- 
 tian, if perchance he could come to appreciate 
 the unspeakable blessedness, and profoundly 
 ennobling reactions, of the habit of permanent 
 and systematic chastity in the conjugal relation, 
 (or what is the same thing, to understand the in- 
 evitably and profoundly degrading tendency of 
 all sexual indulgence for its own sake) — suffer 
 
that wise and intelligent appreciation to deprive 
 domestic life of its chief ornament, its highest 
 joy, and its supreme social end, in the rearing 
 of a wisely restricted number of children, as- 
 suring thus, at once the perpetuation and also 
 the ever-upward development of our Human 
 Race. It is, on the contrary, b) r a w T ise and 
 efficient regulation of domestic life - - that sacred 
 sphere into which the rude and profane hands 
 of temporal authority can never penetrate 
 without desecrating it — ■ that a renewed moral 
 culture, finally, it may be hoped, to become even 
 far more efficient, more lofty, more profoundly 
 searching, than that of the eternally glorious 
 Mediaeval Church, (at this day, save in very 
 narrow and exceptional spheres, so deplorably 
 forgotten and abandoned), will most effectually of 
 all aid in terminating the actual social disorders, 
 quench the revolutionary spirit, by diverting 
 into other channels all that element of it which 
 consists of really sane aspirations, (and without 
 which element it would soon die out of itself), and 
 so most efficiently of all prepare for that King- 
 dom of God which the scientific synthesis desig- 
 nates the Normal State of Man upon the Earth. 
 This is the fundamental significance of the 
 
— 108 — 
 
 retention, by the Positive Religion of Humanity, 
 of the gracious and benign figure of the Virgin- 
 Mother as an object of very special adoration. 
 The last vestige of superstitious fable being 
 dropped from this conception, as from the other 
 sublime, eternal realities of Christianity, it re- 
 mains purely a noble ideal, a chivalrous aspi- 
 ration, an extreme, Utopian limit to a profoundly 
 real, sublime, eternal progress, traceable down- 
 wards to the very lowest animal and vegetable 
 organism in the grand Universal Biological 
 Hierarchy, progress, relatively to the human 
 race, away from a worse than bestial carnality, 
 up towards a perfectly pure and holy lo 
 the only love truly and distinctively human, 
 the only love that, among genuinely cultured 
 souls, really deserves the name of love, the 
 love that asks only to devote itself freely to its 
 object, profoundly appreciating the truth, inac- 
 cessible to the coarse, materialistic natures, that 
 in periods of social decay become so numerous 
 — that it is more blessed to love than to be loved. 
 In the positivist religious propagande this con- 
 ception naturally takes a prominent, indeed a 
 supreme place, the gracious figure of the Virgin- 
 Mother, with Her child in Her arms or at Her 
 
— 109 — 
 
 knees, being recognized as the true visual Re- 
 presentative of Humanity; but here, in these 
 annual lectures, just as in the systematic Public 
 Instruction instituted in the actual situation by 
 the Positive School, all that is appropriate is 
 simply to indicate the fact that positive moral 
 science, the real, the genuine science which 
 teaches the immutable natural laws of our in- 
 dividual human nature, does in fact culminate 
 in just this Ideal. But, for many and various 
 reasons, too obvious to need explicit mention, 
 it is clearly manifest that, in these purely scien- 
 tific and philosophical Expositions, it would be 
 quite out of place to expatiate upon a topic, 
 so directly and almost exclusively appealing to 
 the highest and noblest sentiments of the 
 Human Heart. 
 
 III. 
 
 But the definitive advent of a systematically 
 peaceful social activity in the temporal sphere, 
 and in the spiritual of a complete system of 
 conceptions all purely demonstrable, rendering 
 for the first time fully possible a truly Universal 
 Religion, and rendering therefore its appearance 
 among us sooner or later fully certain, and with 
 
— no — 
 
 a universal religion, a fully planetary priest- 
 hood, is the grand phenomenon presented bv 
 the last six centuries, side by side with the sad 
 spectacle of the long, painful, more and more 
 disorderly decay of the mediaeval system. It is 
 this double movement of decomposition and of 
 recomposition, which we shall have to study to- 
 gether next year. If, in fact, circumstances permit 
 of our meeting together again, on the next 
 recurrence of this anniversary, we shall have 
 to review the services rendered by Augnste 
 Comte in the elucidation of that grand, and yet 
 in many respects gloomy. Historic Period, the 
 Development of Modern Society, stretching from 
 the middle of the thirteenth to the end of the 
 eighteenth centuries. Then the year following, 
 if nothing occur to render the continuation of 
 these Annual Lectures impossible or undesirable, 
 we shall study the Theory developed by the 
 same unexampled Thinker in regard to the Great 
 Modern Crisis, which, rendered inevitable by the 
 immense difficulty of the double transition that 
 then had to be effected, broke out in France in 
 1789, and, in spite of the peculiar circumstan> 
 which there imparted to it a special intensity, 
 making it seem for the moment to be a phenom- 
 
— Til — 
 
 enon exclusive^ French, soon made manifest 
 its essential character, as common in its funda- 
 mental conditions to all the five Great Peoples 
 included in our Modern Occidental Civilization. 
 This difficult transition, as long as it remains 
 merely spontaneous, as indeed it must needs do 
 until it be fairly understood, necessarily keeps 
 our Modern Society in a state of revolutionary 
 fermentation only too full of danger, a state 
 that will entirely cease, as soon as the transition 
 can be transformed from spontaneous to system- 
 atic, by the advent of a sufficient knowledge 
 of the transition that will, in. any case, have to 
 get itself effectuated. 
 
 Nothing is more important for the peace 
 and good order of Society, than that the changes, 
 which become, in fact, inevitable, should not be 
 left to be brought about by revolutionary struggles 
 from below, but should, on the contrary, be ac- 
 complished in a calm, peaceful, gradual and or- 
 derly manner from above, by the action of the 
 enlightened Statesman. If only Louis XVI had 
 stood faithfully by his Heaven-sent Minister, 
 the great and wise Turgot, the violent struggles 
 of 1789 had been unnecessary , and therefore 
 could never have happened. And it was his 
 
— 112 — 
 
 own better self, too ; to which the unhappy 
 Louis was unfaithful, as well as to his immortal 
 Minister, when, in an ill-fated hour in the year 
 1776, he consented to the fatal dismissal, that 
 was fraught with so unhappy consequences for 
 the whole of our modern Europe. But the blind 
 struggle with the nascent new order of thing 
 into which Louis XVI was enticed, even after 
 178;), struggle that cost him and so many others 
 their lives, is a striking proof of Hie danger of 
 leaving the inevitable modifications to be tor. 
 on society from below. Lor when the natural 
 Leaders of Society themselves undertake the 
 accomplishment of these modifications, that 
 accomplishment in no wise necessitates any ab- 
 rupt or perturbating changes in the personnel 
 of Government, or any dangerous interference 
 with existing interests. The inevitable transfor- 
 mation consists essentially only in this very 
 simple fact, that there is a new kind of activity 
 that, by the aid of new methods, needs direction ; 
 if violent changes occur in the personnel of the 
 Governing Classes, it is simply because th< 
 older classes are unable or unwilling to under- 
 take the new Functions. But the violence and 
 painfulness of all the modifications really ne< 
 
— H3 — 
 
 sary, may be entirely saved, where the nature 
 of the inevitable transition is sufficiently known 
 to permit the accomplishment of the transition 
 to be effected under the practical direction of 
 the natural chiefs of the body politic, through the 
 instrumentality of an accomplished Statesman 
 enlightened by Positive Science. If there be any 
 difficulty at all in the matter, it can only arise 
 from the fact that Turgots and Leon Gambettas 
 are not to be had for the mere asking. It remains 
 to be seen w r hether they can be developed. 
 They certainly cannot be by any system of 
 education that altogether excludes investigation 
 of the phenomena that have to be dealt with. 
 Three years from to-day, which will be the 
 hundredth year of this great modern crisis, we 
 shall have, supposing* circumstances still to per- 
 mit the continuation of these Anniversary Lec- 
 tures, to dwell on the brilliant picture of the 
 Future State of Man upon the Earth, deduced 
 by Auguste Comte, with strict scientific exac- 
 titude, from the wise co-ordination of the several 
 elements of that state spontaneously developed 
 in the past. While in the three subsequent 
 years, the work of Auguste Comte being then 
 sufficiently known, at least in its most important 
 
-^ .1*4 — 
 
 aspect ; we shall be free to direct our contem- 
 plation more specifically to the person of this 
 unexampled Renovator, and in three successive 
 Lectures we will consider Auguste Comic tke 
 Philosopher, Auguste Comte the Founder and 
 Auguste Comte the Man. The entire Series, of 
 Eight Lectures, will then comprize a complete 
 and authentic account, only from a popular 
 rather than an academical point of view, of the 
 Life and Work of the extraordinary man, who 
 is but now beginning to be known, and who 
 will be truly appreciated only centuries hence. 
 For Auguste Comte accomplished Three distinct 
 Theoretical Constructions, each one of which 
 would have sufficed to win for him the Immortality 
 of an Aristotle or of a Descartes. But all this 
 vast labor sums itself up in the decisive and 
 irrefragable demonstration of the continuous and 
 irresistible supremacy of Moral Considerations 
 in the ensemble of Human Existences. This' 
 supremacy may be overlooked for a time, and 
 indeed altogether ignored, and yet society not 
 go all to pieces immediately. Happily it is pos- 
 sible for society to live, for a considerable 
 time, on its inherited moral capital. But, with 
 that neglect of the supreme destinies of Human- 
 
— lis — 
 
 ity the social decomposition begins, decompo- 
 sition that nothing can arrest but a sincere re- 
 pentance of the moral treason committed, repent- 
 ance manifested, as sincere repentance always 
 has to be, by an abandonment of the evil ways, 
 and a frank and honest return to the normally 
 supreme allegiance. 
 
 Henry Edger 
 
 Born 22 January 1820 at Chehvood Gate 
 parish of Fletching, Sussex, England, since 
 18 November 1 861 adoptive citizen of the United 
 States of America: (declaration of intention filed 
 23 April 185 1.) 
 
 Presbourg (9 Conventgasse) Hungary 
 
 24 Descartes 97 (31 October 1885.) 
 
A paraitre incessamment: 
 
 Auguste Comte et le Moyenage : 
 
 conference faite devant un cercle prive dans la Ville de 
 Presbourg le samedi, 24 Guttemberg 97 (5 Septembre 1885.) 
 
 Par HENRY EDGER, 
 
 Citoyen adoptif (anglais de naissance) de l'Etat de New -York, Etats-Unis 
 d'Amerique. 
 
 En preparation pour la Presse: 
 
 Indications simp/es et sommaires 
 
 quant a la 
 
 RELIGION POSITIVE DE L'HUMANITE. 
 
 Par le mime Aidenr. 
 
 A paraitre pins tard: 
 
 I<a Pri^re Positive 
 
 et les autres pratiques purement personelles de la 
 
 Esligi@& ^®iitiT@ I@ XMmmmXk 
 
 Par le meme Auteur. 
 LA REVUE OCCIDENTALE 
 
 organe de 
 
 publi£e sous la direction de M. Pierre Laffitte, parait tous les 
 
 deux mois. L'Abonnement par an, affranchissement compris, 
 
 20 francs, se fait cbez M. Vaillant Administrateur de la Revue 
 
 au Bureau, 10 Rue Monsieur-le-Prince, Paris. 
 
By the same Author preparing for the press: 
 
 Simple and summary Indications 
 
 relative to the 
 
 Positive Religion of Humanity. 
 
 By the same Author (to appear later) 
 
 PRIVATE PRAYER 
 
 and the other purely personal practices of the 
 Positive Religion of Humanity. 
 
 INTERNATIONAL POLICY. 
 
 Essays 
 
 By various Authors, on the 
 
 Foreign Relations of England. 
 
 The fundamental doctrine of modern Social Life 
 is the subordination of politics to morals. 
 
 „AUGUSTE COMTE-. 
 
 Second Edition. 
 
 London: Chapman and Hall Limited. 
 
 Printed by Carl Angermayer, Presbourg, Hui 
 

 § " "- 
 
 Auguste COMTE 
 
 B 
 
 
 : 
 
 18 
 
 —7^ 
 
 AND 
 
 j THE MIDDLE AGES j 
 
 A LECTURE 
 
 GIVEN BEFORE A PRIVATE CIRCLE 
 
 IN THE 
 
 CITY OF POZSONY 
 
 (PRESBOURG) 
 
 ON SATURDAY 24 GUTTEMBERG 97 
 
 (5 SEPTEMBER 1885) 
 BY 
 
 HENRY EDGER, 
 
 Naturalized Citizen (English-born) of the United States of America. 
 
 Fais ce que dois advienne que pourra. 
 
 POZSONY : 
 
 PRINTED FOR THE AUTHOR AND PUBLISHED 
 
 BY ALL BOOKSELLERS. 
 
 AGENT FOR THE UNITED STATES: Dr. P. J. POPOFF, 
 
 1948 ATLANTIC AVENUE, BROOKLYN, NEW-YORK. 
 
 -&.11 irig-lvts reserved. 
 
 .....,,.. . . . — —; ■ • < ■_• - ■ • • ■ • • 
 
 Price Sixty Kreuzer. — One .Shilling. — Thirty live cents. 
 
A paraitre incessamment : 
 
 Auguste Comte et le Moyenage: 
 
 conference faite devant un cercle prive dans la Ville de 
 Presbourg le samedi, 24 Guttemberg 97 (5 Septembre 1885.) 
 
 Par HENRY EDGER, 
 
 Citoyen adoptif ( anglais de naissance) de l'Etat de New -York, Etats-Unis 
 d'Amerique. 
 
 En preparation pour la Presse: 
 
 Indications simples et sommaires 
 
 quant a la 
 
 RELIGION POSITIVE DE L'HUMANITE. 
 
 Par le meme Auteur. 
 A paraitre plus tard: 
 
 La Pri^re Positive 
 
 et les autres pratiques purement personelles de la 
 
 Par le meme Auteur. 
 
 LA REVUE OCCIDENTALE 
 
 organe de 
 
 publiee sous la direction de M. Pierre Laffitte, parait tous les 
 
 deux mois. L'Abonnement par an, affranchissement corapris, 
 
 20 francs, se fait chez M. Vaillant Administrateur de la Revue 
 
 au Bureau, 10 Rue Monsieur-le-Prince, Paris. 
 
3 j the im Author preparing for the press: 
 
 Simple and summary Indications 
 
 relative to the 
 
 Positive Religion of Humanity. 
 
 By the same Author (to appear later) 
 
 PRIVATE PRAYER 
 
 and the other purely personal practices of the 
 
 Positive Religion of Humanity. 
 
 INTERNATIONAL POLICY. 
 Essays 
 
 By various Autho the 
 
 Foreign Relations ol England. 
 
 The fundamental doctrine of modern Social Life 
 is the subordination of politics to morals. 
 
 „AUGUSTE COMTE-. 
 
 London: Chapman and Hall Li 
 
 

 

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