58 COMTE TO BENJAMIN KIDD PART i 



public opinion, of the boycott, and of some other 

 institutions of positivist religion, will help altruism to 

 gain the mastery. 



Religion consists chiefly in prayer, offered morning, 

 noon, and night, and addressed to humanity, especially 

 as represented by one's female relatives mother, wife, 

 and daughter. If any one is lacking in the second or 

 third of these, or if any one's wife or daughter is 

 inadequate to the rdle of representing humanity, one 

 may substitute other ladies in one's mind. Humanity 

 consists of the good alone the good of the past, the 

 present, and the future along with those races of the 

 lower animals which, being specially serviceable to man- 

 kind, are "incorporated in humanity." A calendar of 

 saints' days helps to keep the great names of the past in 

 remembrance. For one's own part, one may look 

 forward to something of a similar "subjective" im- 

 mortality. Along with humanity, the "great being," 

 the earth may be worshipped as the " great fetish," and 

 space as the " great medium " together constituting a 

 Positivist Trinity. Paris will be the spiritual capital of 

 humanity. Auguste Comte is the first pontiff of the 

 new and definitive form of religion, a distinction which 

 is no more than fitting in the case of one who combined 

 in his own person the merits of " Aristotle and St. Paul." 

 Comte admired Aristotle as heartily as he disliked 

 Plato, and he went far beyond Tubingen itself in styling 

 St. Paul "the real founder of Catholicism," i.e. of 

 Christianity. 



He not only fixed all these matters, he fixed innumer- 

 able others. Every man of business was to retire at the 

 age of sixty-three, spending the remainder of his days in 

 advising his son how to carry on the business. Every 

 labourer was to own the house he lived in. Every 



