d so on. These ends can only be reached by a
heartier development of the sympathetic instincts. The sympathetic
instincts can only be developed by the Religion of Humanity.' Looking
at the problem in this way, even a moralist who does not expect
theology to be the instrument of social revival, might still ask
whether the sympathetic instincts will not necessarily be already
developed to their highest point, before people will be persuaded to
accept the religion, which is at bottom hardly more than sympathy
under a more imposing name. However that may be, the whole
battle--into which we shall not enter--as to the legitimateness of
Comtism as a religion turns upon this erection of Humanity into a
Being. The various hypotheses, dogmas, proposals, as to the family, to
capital, etc. are merely propositions measurable by considerations of
utility and a balance of expediencies. Many of these proposals are of
the highest interest, and many of them are actually available; but
there does not seem to be one of them of an available kind which could
not equally well be approached from other sides, and even incorporated
in some radically antagonistic system. Adoption, for example, as a
practice for improving the happiness of families and the welfare of
society, is capable of being weighed, and can in truth only be weighed
by utilitarian considerations, and has been commended by men to whom
the Comtist religion is naught. The singularity of Comte's
construction, and the test by which it must be tried, is the transfer
of the worship and discipline of Catholicism to a system in which 'the
conception of God is superseded' by the abstract idea of Humanity,
conceived as a kind of Personality.

And when all is said, the invention does not help us. We have still to
settle what _is_ for the good of Humanity, and we can only do that in
the old-fashioned way. There is no guidance in the conception. No
effective unity can follow from it, because you can only find out the
right and wrong of a given course by summing up the advantages and
disadvantages, and striking a balance, and there is nothing in the
Religion of Humanity to force two men to find the balance on the same
side. The Comtists are no better off than other utilitarians in
judging policy, events, conduct.

The particularities of the worship, its minute and truly ingenious
re-adaptation of sacraments, prayers, reverent signs, down even to the
invocation of a new Trinity, need not det