possible vividness
the image of the object: and every artifice is exhausted to render the
image as life-like, as close to the reality, as near an approach to
actual hallucination, as is consistent with sanity. This degree of
intensity having been, as far as practicable, attained, the effusion
follows. Every person should compose his own form of prayer, which
should be repeated not mentally only, but orally, and may be added
to or varied for sufficient cause, but never arbitrarily. It may be
interspersed with passages from the best poets, when they present
themselves spontaneously, as giving a felicitous expression to the
adorer's own feeling. These observances M. Comte practised to the memory
of his Clotilde, and he enjoins them on all true believers. They are to
occupy two hours of every day, divided into three parts; at rising, in
the middle of the working hours, and in bed at night. The first, which
should be in a kneeling attitude, will commonly be the longest, and the
second the shortest. The third is to be extended as nearly as possible
to the moment of falling asleep, that its effect may be felt in
disciplining even the dreams.

The public _cultus_ consists of a series of celebrations or festivals,
eighty-four in the year, so arranged that at least one occurs in every
week. They are devoted to the successive glorification of Humanity
itself; of the various ties, political and domestic, among mankind; of
the successive stages in the past evolution of our species; and of the
several classes into which M. Comte's polity divides mankind. M. Comte's
religion has, moreover, nine Sacraments; consisting in the solemn
consecration, by the priests of Humanity, with appropriate exhortations,
of all the great transitions in life; the entry into life itself, and
into each of its successive stages: education, marriage, the choice of a
profession, and so forth. Among these is death, which receives the name
of transformation, and is considered as a passage from objective
existence to subjective--to living in the memory of our
fellow-creatures. Having no eternity of objective existence to offer,
M. Comte's religion gives it all he can, by holding out the hope of
subjective immortality--of existing in the remembrance and in the
posthumous adoration of mankind at large, if we have done anything to
deserve remembrance from them; at all events, of those whom we loved
during life; and when they too are gone, of being included in the