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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 



THE PEOPOSED SUBSTITUTES FOE EELIGIOK 



By Peofessor GOLD WIN SMITH. 



THERE appears to be a connection between 

 the proposed substitutes for religion and 

 the special training of their several authors. His- 

 torians tender us the worship of Humanity, pro- 

 fessors of physical science tender us Cosmic 

 Emotion. Theism might almost retort the apo- 

 logue of the spectre of the Brocken. 



The only organized cultus without a God, at 

 present before us, is that of Comte. This in all 

 its parts — its high-priesthood, its hierarchy, its 

 sacraments, its calendar, its hagiology, its literary 

 canon, its ritualism, and we may add in its fun- 

 damentally intolerant and inquisitorial character 

 — is an obvious reproduction of the Church of 

 Rome, with Humanity in place of God, great men 

 in place of the saints, the Founder of Comtism 

 in place of the Founder of Christianity, and even 

 a sort of substitute for the Virgin in the shape 

 of womanhood typified by Clotilde de Vaux. 

 There is only just the amount of difference which 

 would be necessary to escape from servile imita- 

 tion. We have ourselves witnessed a case of al- 

 ternation between the two systems which testified 

 to the closeness of their affinity. The Catholic 

 Church has acted on the imagination of Comte at 

 least as powerfully as Sparta acted on that of 

 Plato. Nor is Comtism, any more than Plato's 

 " Republic " and other Utopias, exempt from the 

 infirmity of claiming finality for a flight of the 

 individual imagination. It would shut up man- 

 kind forever in a stereotyped organization which 

 is the vision of a particular thinker. In this re- 

 spect it seems to us to be at a disadvantage com- 

 pared with Christianity, which, as presented in 

 the Gospels, does not pretend to organize man- 

 kind ecclesiastically or politically, but simply 

 supplies a new type of character, and a new mo- 

 tive power, leaving government, ritual, and or- 

 ganization of every kind to determine themselves 

 from age to age. Comte's prohibition of inquiry 

 into the composition of the stars, which his priest- 

 hood, had it been installed in power, would per- 

 haps have converted into a compulsory article of 

 faith, is only a specimen of his general tendency 

 (the common tendency, as we have said, of all 

 Utopias) to impose on human progress the limits 

 of his own mind. Let his hierarchy become 

 masters of the world, and the effect would prob- 

 ably be like that produced by the ascendency of 



a hierarchy (enlightened no doubt for its time) in 

 Egypt, a brief start forward, followed by conse- 

 crated immobility forever. 



Lareveillere Lepaux, the member of the French 

 Directory, invented a new religion of Theophi- 

 lanthropy, which seems, in fact, to have been an 

 organized Rousseauism. He wished to impose it 

 on France, but finding that, in spite of his pas- 

 sionate endeavors, he made but little progress, he 

 sought the advice of Talleyrand. " I am not sur- 

 prised," said Talleyrand, "at the difficulty you 

 experience. It is no easy matter to introduce a 

 new religion. But I will tell you what I recom- 

 mend you to do. I recommend you to be cruci- 

 fied, and to rise again on the third day." We 

 cannot say whether Lareveillere made any prose- 

 lytes, but if he did their number cannot have 

 been much smaller than the reputed number of 

 the religious disciples of Comte. As a philos- 

 ophy, Comtism has found its place, and exer- 

 cised its share of influence among the philoso- 

 phies of the time ; but as a religious system it 

 appears to make little way. It is the invention 

 of a man, not the spontaneous expression of the 

 beliefs and feelings of mankind. Any one with 

 a tolerably lively imagination might produce a 

 rival system with as little practical effect. Ro- 

 man Catholicism was, at all events, a growth, 

 not an invention. 



Cosmic Emotion, though it does not affect to 

 be an organized system, is the somewhat sudden 

 creation of individual minds, set at work appar- 

 ently by the exigencies of a particular situation, 

 and on that account suggestive prima facie of 

 misgivings similar to those suggested by the in- 

 vention of Comte. 



Now, is the worship of Humanity or Cosmic 

 Emotion really a substitute for religion ? That 

 is the only question which we wish, in these few 

 pages, to ask. We do not pretend here to inquire 

 what is or what is not true in itself. 



Religion teaches that we have our being in a 

 Power whose character and purposes are indi- 

 cated to us by our moral nature, in whom we are 

 united, and by the union made sacred to each 

 other; whose voice conscience, however gener- 

 ated, is ; whose eye is always upon us, sees all 

 our acts, and sees them as they are morally, 

 without reference to worldly success, or to the 



