46o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Bernard de Palissy and to Schiller, to Copernicus and to Dollond, to 

 Otway and to Racine, to Locke and to Freret, to Froissart and to Dal- 

 ton, to Cyrus and to Penn — such a canonization ! in which these se- 

 lected men who are the Positivist saints for ordinary days, are headed 

 by greater saints for Sundays ; with the result that Socrates and God- 

 frey are thus placed on a par ; that while a day is dedicated to 

 Kepler, a week is dedicated to Gall ; Tasso has a week assigned to 

 him, and Goethe a day ; Mozart presides over a week, and a day is pre- 

 sided over by Beethoven ; a week is made sacred to Louis the Eleventh, 

 and a day to Washington — such a canonization ! under which the 

 greatest men, giving their names to months, are so selected that Fred- 

 eric the Second and St. Paul alike bear this distinction ; Guteraberg 

 and Shakespeare head adjacent months ; and while Bichat gives his 

 name to a month, Newton gives his name to a week ! This, which 

 recalls the saints' calendar of the Babylonians, among whom, as Pro- 

 fessor Sayce shows, " each day of the year had been assigned to its 

 particular deity or patron saint," * exemplifies in but one way M. 

 Comte's consuming passion for regulating posterity, and the colossal 

 vanity which led him to believe that mankind would hereafter per- 

 form their daily actions as he dictated. He not only settles the hier- 

 archy of saints who are above others to be worshiped, but he pre- 

 scribes the forms of worship in minute detail. Nine sacraments are 

 specified ; prayer is to be made thrice a day ; for the " daily expres- 

 sion of their emotions both in public and private " it is suggested that 

 future men should use Italian ; f and it is a recommended " rule of 

 worship " of the person you adore, that " a precise idea of the place, 

 next of the seat or the attitude, and, lastly, of the dress, appropriate 

 to each particular case," J should be summoned before the mind. Add 

 to which that in the elaborate rubric the sacred sign (replacing the 

 sign of the cross) and derived " from our cerebral theory " (he had a 

 phrenology of his own) consists in placing " our hand in succession on 

 the three chief organs — those of love, order, and progress." Of ban- 

 ners used in " solemn processions," it is directed that " on their white 

 side will be the holy image ; on their green, the sacred formula of 

 Positivism ; " and " the symbol of our Divinity will always be a wom- 

 an of the age of thirty, with her son in her arms." * Nor was M. 

 Comte's devouring desire to rule the future satisfied with thus elabo- 

 rating the observances of his cult. He undertook to control the secu- 

 lar culture of men, as well as that culture which, I suppose, he distin- 

 guished as sacred. There is " a Positivist library for the nineteenth 

 century," consisting of 150 volumes : the list being compiled for the pur- 

 pose " of guiding the more thoughtful minds." || So that M. Comte's 

 tastes and judgments in poetry, science, history, etc., are to be the 

 standards for future generations. And the numerous regulations of 



* " Records of the Past," vol. vii, p. 167. \ " System of Positive Polity," vol. iv, p. 86. 

 X " Catechism," p. 100. <» " Catechism of Positivism," pp. 142, 143. \ Ibid., p. 88. 



