IDEALIZATION AND RELIGION 299 
IDEALIZATION AND RELIGION ACCORDING TO COMTE 
The process of idealization issuing in religion was recognized 
and valued in the Positive Philosophy but not analyzed and 
developed as it was later in the Polity when Comte had come to 
rate the feelings more highly than the intellect, the beautifying 
of life above material achievement, and had come to worship 
woman because she was the highest expression of this phase of 
life. 
The idealizing activity of man finds expression, according to 
Comte in art in its various forms of poetry, oratory, music, paint- 
ing and sculpture, and in religion. Art is defined as “ an ideal 
representation of facts’ and its object held to be “ to cultivate 
our sense of perfection.” In art, he holds, the unity of human 
nature finds its most complete and most natural representation, 
for it is in direct relation with the three orders of phenomena by 
which human nature is characterized. It originates in feeling, 
has its basis in thought, and its end in action, hence its power 
of exerting an influence for good alike on every phase of our exist- 
ence, whether personal or social. Thus art, standing midway 
between philosophy and polity, should be controlled by the 
former, as the emotions, unguided, express themselves in extrav- 
agant and sometimes harmful ways. Art in turn should influence 
polity, since “ in every operation that man undertakes, he must 
imagine before he executes.” 
Philosophy and art must work together in the formation of 
social Utopias, art to form the ideal and philosophy to see that 
this ideal is related to the real. ‘‘ As humanity is subject to the 
order of the external world,” he says, ‘“‘ the ideal must always be 
subordinated to the real? . . . In our artificial improvements we 
should never aim at anything more than a wise modification of the 
natural order; we should never attempt to subvert it.” # 
Art of various kinds is a factor in progress, he holds, because it 
1 A General View, chs. V and VI. 
2 Ibid., p. 316. He shows how this truth is illustrated in the developing mind 
of the child: “ As his notions of fact change, his fictions are modified in conformity 
with these changes.” 
3 Ibid., p. 319. 
