lieves 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