there be of preaching commercial honor and integrity and the duty of not stealing? Would not a code of commercial honor spring up spontaneously, and be strong in proportion as positive enactments on the subject were weak? So, too, if we give men common aims, interests, and education, what necessity will there be of preaching helpfulness and sympathy? We need have no fear, then, of insisting on the elevation and expansion of the individual as the end of political action, but can rely on the necessities of time, place, and circumstance giving us all the order and stability we require. PART III-THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY. CHAPTER I. BE THE LAW OF WILLS AND CAUSES. EFORE attempting to estimate the effects of Religion in general on what we have seen to be the end not only of Civilization and Government, but also of Nature, viz., the elevation and expansion of the individual mind, it is necessary to pause for a moment and consider the new phase into which Religion has entered in these later times, the new form it has assumed, and the new definition and extension which, in consequence, have been given to the term; as by so doing we shall be in a better position to estimate the probabilities of this new form superseding the older forms, and becoming itself the true and final form. With this object, I have selected for examination the 'Religion of Humanity' of Auguste Comte. Not that I imagine that this religion is held only by Comte and his avowed followers; on the contrary, I am aware that multitudes are travelling towards the same goal, though under quite different colours. For when once the material Universe has been stripped of a ruling Mind, as soul and reason of its existence; when once its cause is regarded as unknowable, and therefore practically questionable or even deniable; it is evident that, unless the religious sentiment is to die out altogether, an object must be found for it in the natural world. And what so likely as that Humanity should be that object? And, sure enough, we find that many of the leading Agnostics and Materialists of the day, although far from avowing that Humanity is the object of their religion, or raising it into a definite cult,' nevertheless find their highest consolation and reward in working for its good, in each and all of its several aspects, physical, intellectual, and moral. And what is this but practically making Humanity the object of their religion, in the sense, at least, in which the term is used by Comte himself. Nor is it the Materialists only who make Humanity the object of their religion. Many of those who have discarded Revelation, and who feel that the existence of God is, at best, a hypothesis, incapable of verification, are travelling towards the same religious goal. The author of Ecce Homo, for example, who represents the tendency of many of the best minds both outside and inside the Church, distinctly declares that when once we shall have made up our minds to put Nature in the place of God, and Humanity in the place of Christ, Religion will again exercise the same influence over men's minds as it did of old. It is not, therefore, because I believe that the followers of Comte are the only persons who make Humanity the object of their religion, that I have selected the works of that eminent philosopher for examination, but because he has given the conception its most complete and systematic statement, and has indicated with the greatest definiteness, the goal towards which so many are consciously or unconsciously tending. In a former chapter I pointed out the great laws of human life which Comte had neglected in making Humanity the central point of Politics. I shall now endeavour to point out the great laws he has neglected in making it the central point and object of Religion. But before doing so it is desirable that the reader should have a clear idea of how the Religion of Humanity' arose in the mind of Auguste Comte, and of the train of thought which, with him, gave it clearness, coherence, and cogency. In considering the reasons that induced Comte to make Humanity the central point of his political scheme, I pointed out that from the time that the Human Race as a whole could be shown to have passed, like other organisms, through a regular course and order of development-successive stages of infancy, youth, and maturity, known as the Theological, Metaphysical, and Positive stages of thought-Humanity could no longer be regarded as a mere aggregate of individuals, in the same sense in which a forest is regarded as a mere aggregate of trees, but must be regarded as a distinct organism in the true sense of that term; the individuals, like the separate cells of an organism, being mere metaphysical abstractions, with no independent life or completeness in themselves. And, accordingly, notwithstanding the fallacies which we found underlying this conception, we saw that it was both natural and logical that Comte should make Humanity, and not the Individual, the central point of his political system. But we were not prepared to find that he had also made it the central point and object of Religion. For forty centuries the object of Religion had been either a Being or beings lying behind the visible worldinvisible Wills that were the secret movers of events, and were called the gods. That anyone, therefore, should venture to bring down this object from Heaven to earth, from the Creator to creatures of a day, was, indeed, a new departure, calculated to shock our most cherished notions. Nevertheless, in spite of our astonishment, a real coherence and consistency will be found in the chain of thought by which he arrives at the conception of Humanity as the object of Religion; and to this I now invite the reader's attention. To begin with, it is evident that Humanity cannot be placed on a secure basis as the object of Religion, until the belief in the Deity has been completely done away with, as otherwise the mere fact of His existence, whether He interfered in human affairs or not, would be sufficient of itself to compel men's worship, in the face of all less consecrated authorities. Even the mere suspicion of His existence would split the allegiance of the mind in twain, by the rival authority which would set up its claims in the imaginations of men. To get rid of the Deity, therefore, was Comte's first concern; and in this attempt he was favoured by the temper of the age in which he was born. At the time of his appearance, Science had already carried her torch into every corner of Nature, and so far as her light had penetrated, phenomena were seen to follow an inviolable order, and not to be subject to that caprice which would have characterized them had they been under the dominion of wills like our own-visible or invisible. The consequence was, that a conviction was engendered in the best minds, that if any phenomenon or event were inexplicable, it was not because it did not follow a law, or have its causes in natural antecedents, but merely that, for the time being, its cause or law had not been discovered. As this conviction of the universality of Law grew, Revelation, which attributed events to those disturbances of law known as miraculous or supernatural interpositions, necessarily lost its hold over the best minds, until at last it became almost entirely discredited. With the fall of Revelation, fell the belief in the Deity that rested on it; or, at any rate, from that time forwards the belief in Him must stand or fall by the same kind of evidence as produces belief in other domains of thought, and must be reached through the same media by which all other knowledge is attained, viz., through the natural human faculties. But it is generally believed that all knowledge or belief that comes through the natural human faculties must fall within the general domain of Science. If, then, the existence of the Deity should prove to be beyond the reach of Science, what reason would there be for believing in His existence at all? Now, with Science, it is an axiom that every circumstance and event has its cause in antecedent circumstances and surrounding conditions. All, therefore, that Science can deal with, or take cognizance of, are the laws which events obey, not their efficient or final causes. can discover, for example, that bodies fall to the ground after a certain law, the law of gravitation-but what the cause of gravitation may be, it does not profess to know. It can dis It |