COSMIC PHILOSOPHY 



the Doctrine of Evolution. And it is, moreover, 

 easy to sympathize with the feeling which led 

 Comte formally to consecrate the memories of 

 the illustrious dead, whose labours have made 

 us what we are ; that " communion of saints, 

 unseen yet not unreal," as Carlyle nobly ex- 

 presses it, " whose heroic sufferings rise up 

 melodiously together unto Heaven, out of all 

 times and out of all lands, as a sacred Miserere ; 

 their heroic actions also, as a boundless ever- 

 lasting Psalm of triumph." This intense feeling 

 of the community of the human race, this " en- 

 thusiasm of Humanity," as the author of " Ecce 

 Homo" calls it, forms a very considerable pari 

 of Christianity when stripped of its mythology, 

 and is one of the characteristics which chiefly 

 serve to difference the world religion of Jesus 

 and Paul from the ethnic religions of antiquity. 

 Nevertheless, after freely acknowledging all 

 these points of excellence in the Comtean con- 

 ception, it must still be maintained that Comte*s 

 assignment of Humanity as the direct object of 

 religious worship was a retrograde step, when 

 viewed in contrast, not only with the cosmic 

 conception of Deity already clearly foreshad- 

 owed by Goethe, but even with the anthropo- 

 morphic conception as held by contemporary 

 liberal theologians. A fatal criticism — omitted, 

 and apparently overlooked by Mr. Mill, in his 

 account of the Comtean religion — remains to 

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