RETROGRESSIVE RELIGION. 461 



these kinds are in addition to the other multitudinous regulations con- 

 tained in those parts of the highly elaborated "System of Positive 

 Polity," in which M. Comte prescribes the social organization, under 

 the arrangements of which " the affective, speculative, patrician, and 

 plebeian" classes are to carry on the business of their lives. 



It is, I say, not a little remarkable that a height of assumption 

 exceeding that ever before displayed by a human being — a self-deifica- 

 tion along with the deification of Humanity — should not have nega- 

 tived belief in the general doctrines set forth by him. One might 

 have thought that by exhibiting a lack of mental balance unparalleled 

 among sane people, he would have wholly discredited his speculations. 

 However, recognizing the fact that this is not so, and assuming that 

 M. Comte's disciples discover in the Religion of Humanity propound- 

 ed by him, a truth which survives recognition of his — eccentricities, 

 let us call them — we will now go on to consider this proposed creed. 



To those who have studied that natural genesis of religion summa- 

 rized in the article Mr. Harrison criticises, * it will appear anomalous 

 that a proposed new and higher religion should be, in large measure, a 

 rehabilitation of the religion with which mankind commenced, and 

 from which they have been insensibly diverging, until the more ad- 

 vanced among them have quite lost sight of it. After an era during 

 which worship of the dead was practiced all the world over, alike by 

 savages and by the progenitors of the civilized — after an era of slow 

 emergence from this primitive religion, during which the propitiation 

 of ghosts completely human was replaced by the propitiation of com- 

 paratively few superhuman ghosts or spirits, and finally by the propi- 

 tiation of a spirit infinitely transcending humanity, and from which 

 human attributes have been gradually dropped, leaving only the most 

 abstract which are themselves fading ; we are told by the Positivists 

 that there is coming an era in which the Universal Power men have 

 come to believe in, will be ignored; and human individualities, regard- 

 ed now singly and now in their aggregate, will again be the objects of 

 religious feeling. If the worship of the dead is not to be completely 

 resuscitated, still the proposal is to resuscitate it in a form but partial- 

 ly transfigured. Though there is no direction to offer at graves food 

 and drink for ghosts, yet public worship of the so-called " Great Being 

 Humanity," " must be performed in the midst of the tombs of the 

 more eminent dead, which tombs are surrounded by a sa6red grove, 

 the scene of the homage paid by their family and their fellow-citi- 

 zens ; " t while " at times within each consecrated tomb, the priest- 

 hood will" superintend the honoring of the good man or woman: J 

 proposed usages analogous to those of many ancestor- worshiping peo- 

 ples. Moreover, again taking a lesson from various races of pagans, 



* And set forth at length in " The Principles of Sociology," Part I. 



f " Positive Polity," vol. iv, p. 139. % " Catechism," p. 137. 



