in the prescribed worship of objects, animate and inanimate. In "Table A, System of Sociolatry," there are times named for the "Festival of the Animals," "Festival of Fire," "Festival of the Sun," "Festival of Iron," etc.
But now, passing over M. Comte's eccentricities and inconsistencies, let us consider on its merits the creed he enunciated. In addition to private worship of guardian angels or household gods, there is to be a public worship of the "Great Being Humanity." How are we to conceive this Great Being? Various conceptions of it are possible; and more or less unlike conceptions are at one time or other presented to us. Let us look at them in succession.
By M. Comte himself, at page 74 of the "Catechism of Positive Religion," we are told that we must—
define Humanity as the whole of human beings, past, present, and future. The word whole points out clearly that you must not take in all men, but those only who are really capable of assimilation, in virtue of a real co-operation on their part in furthering the common good.
On which the first comment suggesting itself is that the word "whole points out clearly" not limitation, but absence of limitation. Passing over this, however, and agreeing to exclude, as is intended, criminals, paupers, beggars, and all who "remain in the parasitic state," it seems that we are to include in the aggregate object of our worship, all who have aided, now aid, and will hereafter aid, social growth and development. Though elsewhere[1] it is limited to those who "co-operate willingly," yet since "the animals which voluntarily aid man" are recognized as "integral portions of the Great Being," and since the co-operation of slaves is as "voluntary" as that of horses, we seem compelled to include, not the superior men and classes only, but even those who, under a coercion such as is used to domestic animals, have helped to subdue the Earth and further the material progress of Humanity. And since the progress of Humanity has been largely aided by the spread of the higher races and accompanying extermination of the lower races, we must comprehend in our conception of this worshipful Great Being all those who, from the earliest savage times, have, as leading warriors and common soldiers, helped by their victories to replace inferior societies by superior ones; not only bloodthirsty conquerors like Sesostris (who is duly sanctified in the calendar) but even such cannibals as the Aztecs, who laid the basis of the Mexican civilization.
So far from seeing in the "Great Being Humanity," as thus defined, anything worshipful, it seems to me that contemplation of it is calculated to excite feelings which it is best to keep out of consciousness.
But now, not to take the doctrine at a disadvantage, let us conceive the object of the Positivist's adoration under a better aspect.
- ↑ "Catechism," p. 427.
