ain us. They are said, though
it is not easy to believe, to have been elaborated by way of Utopia.
If so, no Utopia has ever yet been presented in a style so little
calculated to stir the imagination, to warm the feelings, to soothe
the insurgency of the reason. It is a mistake to present a great body
of hypotheses--if Comte meant them for hypotheses--in the most
dogmatic and peremptory form to which language can lend itself. And
there is no more extraordinary thing in the history of opinion than
the perversity with which Comte has succeeded in clothing a
philosophic doctrine, so intrinsically conciliatory as his, in a
shape that excites so little sympathy and gives so much provocation.
An enemy defined Comtism as Catholicism _minus_ Christianity, to which
an able champion retorted by calling it Catholicism _plus_ Science.
Hitherto Comte's Utopia has pleased the followers of the Catholic,
just as little as those of the scientific spirit.

The elaborate and minute systematisation of life, proper to the
religion of Humanity, is to be directed by a priesthood. The priests
are to possess neither wealth nor material power; they are not to
command, but to counsel; their authority is to rest on persuasion, not
on force. When religion has become positive and society industrial,
then the influence of the church upon the state becomes really free
and independent, which was not the case in the Middle Age. The power
of the priesthood rests upon special knowledge of man and nature; but
to this intellectual eminence must also be added moral power and a
certain greatness of character, without which force of intellect and
completeness of attainment will not receive the confidence they ought
to inspire. The functions of the priesthood are of this kind:--To
exercise a systematic direction over education; to hold a consultative
influence over all the important acts of actual life, public and
private; to arbitrate in cases of practical conflict; to preach
sermons recalling those principles of generality and universal harmony
which our special activities dispose us to ignore; to order the due
classification of society. To perform the various ceremonies
appointed by the founder of the religion. The authority of the
priesthood is to rest wholly on voluntary adhesion, and there is to be
perfect freedom of speech and discussion; though, by the way, we
cannot forget Comte's detestable congratulations to the Czar Nicholas
on the 'wise vigilance'