464 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Let us consider what claims to godhood may be made for the Human- 

 ity immediately known to us. Unquestionably M. Comte's own doc- 

 trine, that there has been going on an evolution of mankind, implies 

 that such portion of the " Great Being Humanity " as is formed by our 

 own generation, is better than the average of those portions which 

 have heretofore lived and died. What then shall we say of this 

 better portion ? 



Of course we must keep out of thought all the bad conduct going 

 on around — the prevailing dishonesty shown in adulteration by re- 

 tailers and production of debased goods by manufacturers, the ineffi- 

 cient and dawdling work of artisans, the many fraudulent transactions 

 of which a few are daily disclosed at trials ; though why we are to 

 exclude the blameworthy from our conception of Humanity, I do not 

 understand. But not dwelling on this, let us contemplate first the 

 intellectual traits, and then the moral traits, of the people who remain 

 after leaving out the worse. 



Those whose mental appetites are daily satisfied by table talk al- 

 most wholly personal, by gossiping books and novels, and by news- 

 papers the contents of which are usually enjoyed the more in propor- 

 tion as there is in them much of the scandalous or the horrible — those 

 who, on Sunday, never working out their own beliefs, receive the 

 weekly dole of thought called for by their state of spiritual pauperism 

 — those who, to the ideas they received during education, add only 

 such as are supplied by daily journals and weekly sermons, with now 

 and then a few from books, having none of their own worth speaking 

 of ; we may be content to class as respectable in the conventional 

 sense, though scarcely in any higher sense — still less to include them 

 as chief components in a body exciting reverence. Even if we limit 

 attention to those of highest culture, including all who are concerned 

 in regulative functions, political, ecclesiastical, educational, or other, 

 the displays of intelligence do not call forth such an emotion as that 

 which M. Comte's theory requires us to entertain. What shall we say 

 of the wisdom of those, including nearly all who occupy influential 

 positions, who persist in thinking that preparation for successful and 

 complete living (which is the purpose of rational education) is best 

 effected by learning to speak and write after the manner of two extinct 

 peoples, and by gaining knowledge of their chief men, their supersti- 

 tions, their deeds of war, etc. — who, in their leading school, devote 

 two hours per week to getting some ideas about the constitution of 

 the world they are born into, and thirty-six hours per week to constru- 

 ing Latin and Greek and making verses, nonsensical or other ; and 

 who, in the competitive examinations they devise, give to knowledge 

 of words double the number of marks which they give to knowledge 

 of things ? That, it seems to me, is not a very worshipful degree of 

 intelligence which fails to recognize the obvious truth that there is 

 an Order of Nature, pervading alike the actions going on within us 



