332 



SCIENCE. 



curious and remarkable though it be, the most 

 striking peculiarity they present. They have been 

 chosen, beyond any reasonable doubt, because of the 

 horror and terror they inspire. For this, above all other 

 creatures, they are promment in Nature. For their de- 

 ceptive coloring, for their insidious approach, for their 

 deadly virus, they have been taken as the type of spirit- 

 ual poison in the Jewish narrative of the Fall. The power 

 of inflicting almost immediate death, which is possessed 

 by the most venomous snakes, and that not by violence 

 but by the infliction of a wound which in itself may be 

 hardly visible, is a power which is indeed full of mystery 

 even to the most cultivated scientific mind, and may well 

 have inspired among men in early ages a desire to pac- 

 ify the powers of evil. The moment this becomes the 

 greit aim and end of worship, a principle is established 

 which is fertile in the development of every foul imagin- 

 ation. Whenever it is the absorbing mot ve and desire 

 of men to do that which may most gratify or pacify mal- 

 evolence, then it ceases to be at all wonderful that men 

 should be driven by their religion to sacrifices the most 

 horrid, and to practices the most unnatural. 



But if we wish to see an illustration and an example of 

 the power of all conceptions of a religious nature in the 

 rapid evolution of unexpected consequences, we have 

 such an example in the case of one man who has lived in 

 our own time, and who still lives in the school which he 

 has founded. I refer to Auguste Comte. It is well 

 known that he denied the existence, or at least denied 

 that we can have any knowledge of the existence, of such 

 a Being as other men mean by God. Mr. John Stuart 

 Mill has insisted with much earnestness and with much 

 lorce that, in spite of this denial, Auguste Comte had a 

 religion. He says it was a religion without a God. But 

 the truth is, that it was a religion having both a creed 

 and an ideal object of worship. That ideal object of 

 worship was an abstract conception of the mind so defin- 

 itely invested with personality that Comte himself gave 

 to it the tide of Tne Great Being (Grand Eire). The 

 abstract conception thus personified was the abstract 

 conception of Humanity — Man considered in his past, his 

 present, and his future. Clearly this is in intellectual 

 Fetish. It is not the worship of a Being known or be- 

 lieved to have any real existence ; it is the worship of an 

 idea shaped and molded by the mind, and then artifici- 

 ally clothed with the attributes ot personality. It is the 

 worship of an article manufactured by the imagination, 

 just as Fetishism, in its strictest meaning is the 

 worship of an article manufactured by the hand. 

 Nor is it difficult to assign to it a place in the classifica- 

 tion of religions in which a loose signification has been 

 assigned to the term Fetishism. The worship of Human- 

 ity is merely one form of animal-worship. Indeed, 

 Comte himself specially included the whole animal crea- 

 tion. It is the worship of the creature Man as the con- 

 summation of all other creatures, with all the marvels and 

 all the unexhausted possibilities of his moral and intel- 

 lectual nature. The worship of this creature may cer- 

 tainly be in the nature of a religion, as much higher than 

 other torms of animal worship as Man is higher than a 

 beetle, or an ibis, or a crocodile, or a serpent. But so 

 also, on the other hand, it may be a religion as much 

 lower than the worship of other animals, in proportion 

 as man can be wicked and vicious in a sense in which 

 the beasts cannot. Obviously, therefore, such a worship 

 would be liable to special causes of degradation.' We 

 have seen it to be one ot the great peculiarities of Man, 

 as distinguished from the lower animals, that whilst they 

 always ooey and fulfill the highest law of their being, 

 there is no similar perfect obedience in the case of Man. 

 On the contrary, he often uses his special powers with 

 such perverted ingenuity that they reduce him to a con- 

 dition more miseraole and more degraded than the condi- 

 tion of any beast. It lollows that the worship of Human- 

 ity must, as a religion, be liable to corresponding degra- 



dation. The philosopher, or the teacher, or the prophet 

 who may first personify this abstract conception, and 

 enshrine it as an object of worship, may have before him 

 nothing but the highest aspects of human nature, and its 

 highest aspirations. Mill has seen and has well expressed 

 the limitations under which alone such a worship could 

 have any good effect. " That the ennobling power of 

 this grand conception may have its full efficacy, he 

 should, with Comte, regard the Grand Etre, Humanity 

 or Mankind, as composed in the past solely of those who, 

 in every age and variety of position, have played their 

 part worthily in life. It is only as thus restricted that 

 the aggregate of our species becomes an object worthy 

 our veneration." 3 This, no doubt, was Comte's own 

 idea. But how are his disciples and followers to be kept 

 up to the same high standard of conception ? Comte 

 seems to have been personally a very high-minded and a 

 very pure-minded man. His morality was austere, al- 

 most ascetic, and his spirit of devotion found delight in 

 the spirit of the Christian Mystics. Yet even in his hands 

 the development of his conceptions led him to results 

 eminently irrational, although it cannot be said that they 

 were ever degrading or impure. But we have only to 

 consider how comparatively rare are the examples of the 

 the highest human excellence, and how common and pre- 

 vailing are the vices and weakness of Humanity, to see 

 how terrible would be the possibilities and the probabili- 

 ties of corruption in a religion which had Man for the 

 highest object of its worship. Nor is this all that is to be 

 said on the inevitable tendency to degradation which 

 must attend any worship of Humanity. Not only are the 

 highest forms of human virtue rare, but even when they 

 do occur, they are very apt to be rejected and despised 

 of men. Power and strength, however vicious in its ex- 

 ercise, almost always receives the homage ot the world. 

 The human idols, therefore, who would be chosen as 

 symbols in the worship of humanity, would often be those 

 who set the very worst examples to their kind. Perhaps 

 no better illustration of this could be found than the his- 

 tory of Napoleon Buonaparte. I think it is impossible to 

 follow that history, as it is now known, without coming 

 to the conclusion that in every sense of the word he was 

 a bad man — unscrupulous, false, and mean. But his in- 

 tellect was powerful, whilst his force and energy of 

 character were tremendous. These qualities alone, ex- 

 hibited in almost unexampled military success, were suffi- 

 cient to make him the idol of many minds. And as mere 

 success secured for him this place, so nothing but failure 

 deprived him of it. Not a few of the chosen heroes ot 

 Humanity have been chosen for reasons but little better. 

 Comte himself, seeing this danger, and with an exalted 

 estimate and ideal of the character of womanhood, had 

 laid it down that it would be best to select some woman 

 as the symbol, if not the object, of private adoration in 

 the worship of Humanity. The French Revolutionists 

 selected a woman, too, and we know the kind of woman 

 that they chose. It may be wise, perhaps, to set aside this 

 famous episode in a fit of national insanity as nothing 

 more than a profane joke ; but the developments of 

 anthropomorphism in the mythology of the Pagan world 

 are a sufficient indication of the kind of worship which 

 the worship of Humanity would certainly tend to be. 



The result, then, of this analysis of that in which all 

 Religion essentially consists, and of the objects which it 

 selects, or imagines, or creates for worship, is to show 

 that in Religion, above all other things, the processes of 

 evolution are especially liable'to work in the direction of 

 degradation. That analysis shows how it is that in the 

 domain of religious conceptions, even more than in any 

 domain of thought, the work of development must be 

 rapid, because, in the absence of revelation or the teach- 

 ings of Authority, fancy and imagination have no guide 

 and are under no restraint. 



s Mill's " Comte and Positivism," p. 136. 



