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 a 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
t