to notice, because M. Comte is perpetually referring to it as the origin
of the great superiority which he ascribes to his later as compared with
his earlier speculations, is the "moral regeneration" which he underwent
from "une angélique influence" and "une incomparable passion privée." He
formed a passionate attachment to a lady whom he describes as uniting
everything which is morally with much that is intellectually admirable,
and his relation to whom, besides the direct influence of her character
upon his own, gave him an insight into the true sources of human
happiness, which changed his whole conception of life. This attachment,
which always remained pure, gave him but one year of passionate
enjoyment, the lady having been cut off by death at the end of that
short period; but the adoration of her memory survived, and became, as
we shall see, the type of his conception of the sympathetic culture
proper for all human beings. The change thus effected in his personal
character and sentiments, manifested itself at once in his speculations;
which, from having been only a philosophy, now aspired to become a
religion; and from having been as purely, and almost rudely, scientific
and intellectual, as was compatible with a character always enthusiastic
in its admirations and in its ardour for improvement, became from this
time what, for want of a better name, may be called sentimental; but
sentimental in a way of its own, very curious to contemplate. In
considering the system of religion, politics, and morals, which in his
later writings M. Comte constructed, it is not unimportant to bear in
mind the nature of the personal experience and inspiration to which he
himself constantly attributed this phasis of his philosophy. But as we
shall have much more to say against, than in favour of, the conclusions
to which he was in this manner conducted, it is right to declare that,
from the evidence of his writings, we really believe the moral influence
of Madame Clotilde de Vaux upon his character to have been of the
ennobling as well as softening character which he ascribes to it. Making
allowance for the effects of his exuberant growth in self-conceit, we
perceive almost as much improvement in his feelings, as deterioration in
his speculations, compared with those of the Philosophie Positive. Even
the speculations are, in some secondary aspects, improved through the
beneficial effect of the improved feelings; and might have been more so,
if, by a rare good fortune, the object of his attachment had been
qualified to exercise as improving an influence over him intellectually
as morally, and if he could have been contented with something less
ambitious than being the supreme moral legislator and religious pontiff
of the human race.
When we say that M. Comte has erected his philosophy into a religion,
the word religion must not be understood in its ordinary sense. He made
no change in the purely negative attitude which he maintained towards
theology: his religion is without a God. In saying this, we have done
enough to induce nine-tenths of all readers, at least in our own
country, to avert their faces and close their ears. To have no religion,
though scandalous enough, is an idea they are partly used to: but to
have no God, and to talk of religion, is to their feelings at once an
absurdity and an impiety. Of the remaining tenth, a great proportion,
perhaps, will turn away from anything which calls itself by the name of
religion at all. Between the two, it is difficult to find an audience
who can be induced to listen to M. Comte without an insurmountable
prejudice. But, to be just to any opinion, it ought to be considered,
not exclusively from an opponent's point of view, but from that of the
mind which propounds it. Though conscious of being in an extremely small
minority, we venture to think that a religion may exist without belief
in a God, and that a religion without a God may be, even to Christians,
an instructive and profitable object of contemplation.
What, in truth, are the conditions necessary to constitute a religion?
There must be a creed, or conviction, claiming authority over the whole
of human life; a belief, or set of beliefs, deliberately adopted,
respecting human destiny and duty, to which the believer inwardly
acknowledges that all his actions ought to be subordinate. Moreover,
there must be a sentiment connected with this creed, or capable of being
invoked by it, sufficiently powerful to give it in fact, the authority
over human conduct to which it lays claim in theory. It is a great
advantage (though not absolutely indispensable) that this sentiment
should crystallize, as it were, round a concrete object; if possible a
really existing one, though, in all the more important cases, only
ideally present. Such an object Theism and Christianity offer to the
believer: but the condition may be fulfilled, if not in a manner
strictly equivalent, by another object. It has been said that whoever
believes in "the Infinite nature of Duty," even if he believe in nothing
else, is religious. M. Comte believes in what is meant by the infinite
nature of duty, but ho refers the obligations of duty, as well as all
sentiments of devotion, to a concrete object, at once ideal and real;
the Human Race, conceived as a continuous whole, including the past, the
present, and the future. This great collective existence, this "Grand
Etre," as he terms it, though the feelings it can excite are necessarily
very different from those which direct themselves towards an ideally
perfect Being, has, as he forcibly urges, this advantage in respect to
us, that it really needs our services, which Omnipotence cannot, in any
genuine sense of the term, be supposed to do: and M. Comte says, that
assuming the existence of a Supreme Providence (which he is as far from
denying as from affirming), the best, and even the only, way in which we
can rightly worship or serve Him, is by doing our utmost to love and
serve that other Great Being, whose inferior Providence has bestowed on
us all the benefits that we owe to the labours and virtues of former
generations. It may not be consonant to usage to call this a religion;
but the term so applied has a meaning, and one which is not adequately
expressed by any other word. Candid persons of all creeds may be willing
to admit, that if a person has an ideal object, his attachment and sense
of duty towards which are able to control and discipline all his other
sentiments and propensities, and prescribe to him a rule of life, that
person has a religion: and though everyone naturally prefers his own
religion to any other, all must admit that if the object of this
attachment, and of this feeling of duty, is the aggregate of our
fellow-creatures, this Religion of the Infidel cannot, in honesty and
conscience, be called an intrinsically bad one. Many, indeed, may be
unable to believe that this object is capable of gathering round it
feelings sufficiently strong: but this is exactly the point on which a
doubt can hardly remain in an intelligent reader of M. Comte: and we
join with him in contemning, as equally irrational and mean, the
conception of human nature as incapable of giving its love and devoting
its existence to any object which cannot afford in exchange an eternity
of personal enjoyment.
The power which may be acquired over the mind by the idea of the general
interest of the human race, both as a source of emotion and as a motive
to conduct, many have perceived; but we know not if any one, before M.
Comte, realized so fully as he has done, all the majesty of which that
idea is susceptible. It ascends into the unknown recesses of the past,
embraces the manifold present, and descends into the indefinite and
unforeseeable future, forming a collective Existence without assignable
beginning or end, it appeals to that feeling of the Infinite, which is
deeply rooted in human nature, and which seems necessary to the
imposingness of all our highest conceptions. Of the vast unrolling web
of human life, the part best known to us is irrevocably past; this we
can no longer serve, but can still love: it comprises for most of us the
far greater number of those who have loved us, or from whom we have
received benefits, as well as the long series of those who, by their
labours and sacrifices for mankind, have deserved to be held in
everlasting and grateful remembrance. As M. Comte truly says, the
highest minds, even now, live in thought with the great dead, far more
than with the living; and, next to the dead, with those ideal human
beings yet to come, whom they are never destined to see. If we honour as
we ought those who have served mankind in the past, we shall feel that
we are also working for those benefactors by serving that to which their
lives were devoted. And when reflection, guided by history, has taught
us the intimacy of the connexion of every age of humanity with every
other, making us see in the earthly destiny of mankind the playing out
of a great drama, or the action of a prolonged epic, all the generations
of mankind become indissolubly united into a single image, combining all
the power over the mind of the idea of Posterity, with our best feelings
towards the living world which surrounds us, and towards the
predecessors who have made us what we are. That the ennobling power of
this grand conception may have its full efficacy, we should, with M.
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 deserving our veneration.
The unworthy members of it are best dismissed from our habitual
thoughts; and the imperfections which adhered through life, even to
those of the dead who deserve honourable remembrance, should be no
further borne in mind than is necessary not to falsify our conception of
facts. On the other hand, the Grand Etre in its completeness ought to
include not only all whom we venerate, but all sentient beings to which
we owe duties, and which have a claim on our attachment. M. Comte,
therefore, incorporates into the ideal object whose service is to be the
law of our life, not our own species exclusively, but, in a subordinate
degree, our humble auxiliaries, those animal races which enter into real
society with man, which attach themselves to him, and voluntarily
co-operate with him, like the noble dog who gives his life for his human
friend and benefactor. For this M. Comte has been subjected to unworthy
ridicule, but there is nothing truer or more honourable to him in the
whole body of his doctrines. The strong sense he always shows of the
worth of the inferior animals, and of the duties of mankind towards
them, is one of the very finest traits of his character.
We, therefore, not only hold that M. Comte was justified in the attempt
to develope his philosophy into a religion, and had realized the
essential conditions of one, but that all other religions are made
better in proportion as, in their practical result, they are brought to
coincide with that which he aimed at constructing. But, unhappily, the
next thing we are obliged to do, is to charge him with making a complete
mistake at the very outset of his operations--with fundamentally
misconceiving the proper office of a rule of life. He committed the
error which is often, but falsely, charged against the whole class of
utilitarian moralists; he required that the test of conduct should also
be the exclusive motive to it. Because the good of the human race is the
ultimate standard of right and wrong, and because moral discipline
consists in cultivating the utmost possible repugnance to all conduct
injurious to the general good, M. Comte infers that the good of others
is the only inducement on which we should allow ourselves to act; and
that we should endeavour to starve the whole of the desires which point
to our personal satisfaction, by denying them all gratification not
strictly required by physical necessities. The golden rule of morality,
in M. Comte's religion, is to live for others, "vivre pour autrui." To
do as we would be done by, and to love our neighbour as ourself, are not
sufficient for him: they partake, he thinks, of the nature of personal
calculations. We should endeavour not to love ourselves at all. We shall
not succeed in it, but we should make the nearest approach to it
possible. Nothing less will satisfy him, as towards humanity, than the
sentiment which one of his favourite writers, Thomas à Kempis, addresses
to God: Amem te plus quam me, nec me nisi propter te. All education and
all moral discipline should have but one object, to make altruism (a
word of his own coming) predominate over egoism. If by this were only
meant that egoism is bound, and should be taught, always to give way to
the well-understood interests of enlarged altruism, no one who
acknowledges any morality at all would object to the proposition.
But M. Comte, taking his stand on the biological fact that organs are
strengthened by exercise and atrophied by disuse, and firmly convinced
that each of our elementary inclinations has its distinct cerebral
organ, thinks it the grand duty of life not only to strengthen the
social affections by constant habit and by referring all our actions to
them, but, as far as possible, to deaden the personal passions and
propensities by desuetude. Even the exercise of the intellect is
required to obey as an authoritative rule the dominion of the social
feelings over the intelligence (du coeur sur l'esprit). The physical and
other personal instincts are to be mortified far beyond the demands of
bodily health, which indeed the morality of the future is not to insist
much upon, for fear of encouraging "les calculs personnels." M. Comte
condemns only such austerities as, by diminishing the vigour of the
constitution, make us less capable of being useful to others. Any
indulgence, even in food, not necessary to health and strength, he
condemns as immoral. All gratifications except those of the affections,
are to be tolerated only as "inevitable infirmities." Novalis said of
Spinoza that he was a God-intoxicated man: M. Comte is a
morality-intoxicated man. Every question with him is one of morality,
and no motive but that of morality is permitted.
The explanation of this we find in an original mental twist, very common
in French thinkers, and by which M. Comte was distinguished beyond them
all. He could not dispense with what he called "unity." It was for the
sake of Unity that a religion was, in his eyes, desirable. Not in the
mere sense of Unanimity, but in a far wider one. A religion must be
something by which to "systematize" human life. His definition of it, in
the "Catéchisme," is "the state of complete unity which distinguishes
our existence, at once personal and social, when all its parts, both
moral and physical, converge habitually to a common destination....
Such a harmony, individual and collective, being incapable of complete
realization in an existence so complicated as ours, this definition of
religion characterizes the immovable type towards which tends more and
more the aggregate of human efforts. Our happiness and our merit consist
especially in approaching as near as possible to this unity, of which
the gradual increase constitutes the best measure of real improvement,
personal or social." To this theme he continually returns, and argues
that this unity or harmony among all the elements of our life is not
consistent with the predominance of the personal propensities, since
these drag us in different directions; it can only result from the
subordination of them all to the social icelings, which may be made to
act in a uniform direction by a common system of convictions, and which
differ from the personal inclinations in this, that we all naturally
encourage them in one another, while, on the contrary, social life is a
perpetual restraint upon the selfish propensities.
The _fons errorum_ in M. Comte's later speculations is this inordinate
demand for "unity" and "systematization." This is the reason why it does
not suffice to him that all should be ready, in case of need, to
postpone their personal interests and inclinations to the requirements
of the general good: he demands that each should regard as vicious any
care at all for his personal interests, except as a means to the good of
others--should be ashamed of it, should strive to cure himself of it,
because his existence is not "systematized," is not in "complete unity,"
as long as he cares for more than one thing. The strangest part of the
matter is, that this doctrine seems to M. Comte to be axiomatic. That
all perfection consists in unity, he apparently considers to be a maxim
which no sane man thinks of questioning. It never seems to enter into
his conceptions that any one could object _ab initio_, and ask, why this
universal systematizing, systematizing, systematizing? Why is it
necessary that all human life should point but to one object, and be
cultivated into a system of means to a single end? May it not be the
fact that mankind, who after all are made up of single human beings,
obtain a greater sum of happiness when each pursues his own, under the
rules and conditions required by the good of the rest, than when each
makes the good of the rest his only subject, and allows himself no
personal pleasures not indispensable to the preservation of his
faculties? The regimen of a blockaded town should be cheerfully
submitted to when high purposes require it, but is it the ideal
perfection of human existence? M. Comte sees none of these difficulties.
The only true happiness, he affirms, is in the exercise of the
affections. He had found it so for a whole year, which was enough to
enable him to get to the bottom of the question, and to judge whether he
could do without everything else. Of course the supposition was not to
be heard of that any other person could require, or be the better for,
what M. Comte did not value. "Unity" and "systematization" absolutely
demanded that all other people should model themselves after M. Comte.
It would never do to suppose that there could be more than one road to
human happiness, or more than one ingredient in it.
The most prejudiced must admit that this religion without theology is
not chargeable with relaxation of moral restraints. On the contrary, it
prodigiously exaggerates them. It makes the same ethical mistake as the
theory of Calvinism, that every act in life should be done for the glory
of God, and that whatever is not a duty is a sin. It does not perceive
that between the region of duty and that of sin there is an intermediate
space, the region of positive worthiness. It is not good that persons
should be bound, by other people's opinion, to do everything that they
would deserve praise for doing. There is a standard of altruism to which
all should be required to come up, and a degree beyond it which is not
obligatory, but meritorious. It is incumbent on every one to restrain
the pursuit of his personal objects within the limits consistent with
the essential interests of others. What those limits are, it is the
province of ethical science to determine; and to keep all individuals
and aggregations of individuals within them, is the proper office of
punishment and of moral blame. If in addition to fulfilling this
obligation, persons make the good of others a direct object of
disinterested exertions, postponing or sacrificing to it even innocent
personal indulgences, they deserve gratitude and honour, and are fit
objects of moral praise. So long as they are in no way compelled to this
conduct by any external pressure, there cannot be too much of it; but a
necessary condition is its spontaneity; since the notion of a happiness
for all, procured by the self-sacrifice of each, if the abnegation is
really felt to be a sacrifice, is a contradiction. Such spontaneity by
no means excludes sympathetic encouragement; but the encouragement
should take the form of making self-devotion pleasant, not that of
making everything else painful. The object should be to stimulate
services to humanity by their natural rewards; not to render the pursuit
of our own good in any other manner impossible, by visiting it with the
reproaches of other and of our own conscience. The proper office of
those sanctions is to enforce upon every one, the conduct necessary to
give all other persons their fair chance: conduct which chiefly consists
in not doing them harm, and not impeding them in anything which without
harming others does good to themselves. To this must of course be added,
that when we either expressly or tacitly undertake to do more, we are
bound to keep our promise. And inasmuch as every one, who avails himself
of the advantages of society, leads others to expect from him all such
positive good offices and disinterested services as the moral
improvement attained by mankind has rendered customary, he deserves
moral blame if, without just cause, he disappoints that expectation.
Through this principle the domain of moral duty is always widening.
When what once was uncommon virtue becomes common virtue, it comes to be
numbered among obligations, while a degree exceeding what has grown
common, remains simply meritorious.
M. Comte is accustomed to draw most of his ideas of moral cultivation
from the discipline of the Catholic Church. Had he followed that
guidance in the present case, he would have been less wide of the mark.
For the distinction which we have drawn was fully recognized by the
sagacious and far-sighted men who created the Catholic ethics. It is
even one of the stock reproaches against Catholicism, that it has two
standards of morality, and does not make obligatory on all Christians
the highest rule of Christian perfection. It has one standard which,
faithfully acted up to, suffices for salvation, another and a higher
which when realized constitutes a saint. M. Comte, perhaps
unconsciously, for there is nothing that he would have been more
unlikely to do if he had been aware of it, has taken a leaf out of the
book of the despised Protestantism. Like the extreme Calvinists, he
requires that all believers shall be saints, and damns then (after his
own fashion) if they are not.