RETROGRESSIVE RELIGION. 467 



any one not a disciple will examine his consciousness, he will, I think, 

 quickly perceive that veneration or gratitude felt toward any being, 

 implies belief in the conscious action of that being — implies ascrip- 

 tion of a prompting motive of a high kind, and deeds resulting from 

 it : gratitude can not be entertained toward something which is un- 

 conscious. So that the " Great Being Humanity " must be conceived 

 as having in its incorporated form, ideas, feelings, and volitions. 

 Naturally there follows the inquiry — " Where is its seat of conscious- 

 ness ? " Is it diffused throughout mankind at large ? That can not 

 be ; for consciousness is an organized combination of mental states, 

 implying instantaneous communications such as certainly do not exist 

 throughout Humanity. Where, then, must be its center of conscious- 

 ness ? In France, of course, which, in the Comtean system, is to be the 

 leading State ; and naturally in Paris, to which all the major axes of 

 the temples of Humanity are to point. Any one with adequate hu- 

 mor might raise amusing questions respecting the constitution of that 

 consciousness of the Great Being supposed to be thus localized. But, 

 preserving our gravity, we have simply to recognize the obvious truth 

 that Humanity has no corporate consciousness whatever. Conscious- 

 ness, known to each as existing in himself, is ascribed by him to other 

 beings like himself, and, in a measure, to inferior beings ; and there 

 is not the slightest reason for supposing that there ever was, is now, 

 or ever will be, any consciousness among men save that which exists 

 in them individually. If, then, " the Great Being, who is the Author 

 of all these conquests," is unconscious, the emotions of veneration and 

 gratitude are absolutely irrelevant. 



It will doubtless seem a paradox to say that human evolution with 

 all its marvels, is to be credited neither to Humanity as an aggregate, 

 nor to its component individuals ; but the paradox will not be diffi- 

 cult to justify: especially if we set out with some analogies. An apt 

 one is supplied by that " thing of beauty," the Miplectella or " Venus' 

 flower-basket," now not uncommon as a drawing-room ornament. 

 This fragile piece of animal architecture is not a product of any con- 

 scious creature, or of any combination of conscious creatures. It is 

 the framework unknowingly elaborated by innumerable ciliated mo- 

 nads — each a simple nucleated cell, with a whip-like appendage which 

 serves, by its waving movements, to aid the drawing in and sending 

 out of sea-water, from which nutritive matter is obtained ; and it is 

 simply by the proclivities which these monads have toward certain 

 modes of growth and secretion, that they form, without the conscious- 

 ness of any one, or of all, this complicated city they inhabit. Again, 

 take the case of a coral island. By it we are shown that a multitude 

 of insignificant individuals may, by their separate actions carried on 

 without concert, generate a structure imposing by its size and stabil- 

 ity. One of these palm-covered atolls standing up out of vast depths 

 in the Pacific, has been slowly built up by coral-polyps, while, through 



