THE KELIGIOUS SENTIMENT. 



129 



ing it with increasing rapidity, will 

 produce agencies for the discharge of 

 nearly all social functions, and will 

 leave to the primary govermental 

 agency nothing beyond the function 

 of maintaining those conditions to 

 free action, which make such spon 

 taneous co-operation possible one in 

 which individual life will thus be 

 pushed to the greatest extent consis 

 tent with social life; and in which 

 social life will have no other end than 

 to maintain the completest sphere for 

 individual life 



I conceive, on the other hand, that 

 the object of religious sentiment will 

 ever continue to be, that which it has 

 ever been the unknown source of 

 things. &quot;While the forms under which 

 men are conscious of the unknown 

 source of things, may fade away, 

 the substance of the consciousness is 

 permanent. Beginning with causal 

 agents conceived as imperfectly 

 known ; progressing to causal agents 

 conceived as less known and less 

 knowable; and coming at last to a 

 universal causal agent posited as 

 not to be known at all ; the religious 

 sentiment must ever continue to oc 

 cupy itself with this universal causal 

 agent. Having in the course of 

 evolution, come to have for its object 

 of contemplation, the Infinite Un 

 knowable, the religious sentiment can 

 never again (unless by retrogression) 

 take a Finite .Knowable, like Human 

 ity, for its object of contemplation. 



Here, then, are sundry other points, all of them important, 

 and the last two supremely important, on which I am 

 diametrically opposed to M. Comte ; and did space permit, 

 I could add many others. Radically differing from him as I 

 thus do, in everything distinctive of his philosophy; and 



M. Comtc, not including 

 in his philosophy the con 

 sciousness of a cause mani 

 fested to us in all phe 

 nomena, and yet holding 

 that there must be a reli 

 gion, which must have an 

 object, takes for his object 

 Humanity. &quot; This Col 

 lective Life (of Society) A is 

 in Comte s system the Etre 

 Supreme; the only one we 

 can know, therefore the only 

 one we can worship.&quot; 



