ted 'provisionally the evolution
of our best feelings, under the regency of God, during the long
minority of Humanity.'

But the fact that Religion will not be banished, that it must somehow
find expression, never received fuller verification. We do not dwell
upon the private life of Comte, its eccentricities and inconsistencies,
but this at least cannot be omitted: he practised a course of austere
religious observances, he worshipped not only Humanity at large, but he
paid special adoration to a departed friend such as hardly the
devoutest of Roman Catholics has ever paid to the Virgin Mary.
Positivism became, what Professor Huxley called it, 'Catholicism
_minus_ Christianity.' Comte laid down for the guidance of his {106}
disciples, who are potentially all mankind, rules which no existing
religious communion can surpass in minuteness. The Supreme Object of
Worship is the Great Being, Humanity, the Sum of Human Beings, past,
present, and future. But as it is only too evident that too many of
these beings in the past and the present, whatever may be said about
the future, are not very fitting objects of worship, Humanity, the
Great Being, must be understood as including only worthy members, those
who have been true servants of Humanity. The emblem of this Great
Being is a Woman of the age of thirty, with her son in her arms; and
this emblem is to be placed in all temples of Humanity and carried in
all solemn processions. The highest representatives of Humanity are
the Mother, the Wife, and the Daughter; the Mother representing the
past, the Wife the present, and the Daughter the future. These are in
the abstract to be regarded as the guardian {107} angels of the family.
To these angels every one is to pray three times daily, and the
prayers, which may be read, but which must be the composition of him
who uses them, are to last for two hours. Humanity, the World, and
Space form the completed Trinity of the Positivist Religion. There are
nine sacraments: Presentation, Initiation, Admission, Destination,
Marriage, Maturity, Retirement, Transformation, Incorporation. There
is a priesthood, to whom is committed the duties of deciding who may or
may not be admitted to certain offices during life, of deciding also
whether or not the remains of those who have been dead for seven years
should be removed from the common burial-place, and interred in 'the
sacred wood which surrounds the temple of humanity,' every tomb th