CHAP, vi COMTE'S LAWGIVING 63 



this point Comte's teaching is surely large-hearted and 

 nobly wise. 



Positivist education, especially as carried on by 

 mothers, will be moral even more than intellectual. 

 And afterwards, the influence of the priesthood, of 

 public opinion, of the boycott, and of some other in- 

 stitutions of positivist religion, will help altruism to 

 gain the mastery. 



Religion consists chiefly in prayer, offered morning, 

 noon, and night, and addressed to humanity, especially 

 as represented by one's female relatives mother, 

 wife, and daughter. If any one is lacking in the 

 second or third of these, or if any one's wife or daugh- 

 ter is inadequate to the rdle of representing humanity, 

 one may substitute other ladies in one's mind. Hu- 

 manity consists of the good alone the good of the 

 past, the present, and the future along with those 

 races of the lower animals which, being specially ser- 

 viceable to mankind, are " incorporated in humanity." 

 A calendar of saints' days helps to keep the great 

 names of the past in remembrance. For one's own 

 part, one may look forward to something of a similar 

 " subjective " immortality. Along with humanity, the 

 "great being," the earth may be worshipped as the 

 "great fetish," and space as the "great medium" 

 together constituting a Positivist Trinity. Paris will 

 be the spiritual capital of humanity. Auguste Comte 

 is the first pontiff of the new and definitive form of 

 religion, a distinction which is no more than fitting 

 in the case of one who combined in his own person 

 the merits of "Aristotle and St. Paul." Comte ad- 

 mired Aristotle as heartily as he disliked Plato, and 

 he went far beyond Tubingen itself in styling St 



