A General View of Positivism by Auguste Comte (learn to read books TXT) 📕

has been conducted hitherto on such unsatisfactory principles, that we can hardly form an adequate notion of its results when Positivism has regenerated it, and has concentrated the affections as well as the thoughts of Man upon human life. To live with the dead is the peculiar privilege of Humanity, a privilege which will extend as our conceptions widen and our thoughts become more pure. Under Positivism the impulse to it will become far stronger, and it will be recognized as a systematic principle in private as well as in public life. Even the Future is not excluded from its application. We may live with those who are not yet born; a thing impossible only till a true theory of history had arisen, of scope sufficient to embrace at one glance the whole course of human destiny. There are numberless instances to prove that the heart of Man is capable of emotions which have no outward basis, except what Imagination has supplied. The familiar spirits of the Polytheist, the mystical desires of the Monotheist, all point to a general tendency in the Past, which, with our better principles, we shall be able in the Future to direct to a nobler and more real purpose. And thus even those who may be so unfortunate as to have no special object of love need not, on that account, be precluded from the act of worship: they may choose from the women of the past some type adapted to their own nature. Men of powerful imagination might even form their own more perfect ideal, and thus open out the path of the future. This, indeed, is what was often done by the knights of chivalrous times, simple and uninstructed as they were. Surely then we, with our fuller understanding and greater familiarity with the Past, should be able to idealize more perfectly. But whether the choice lie in the Past or in the Future, its efficacy would be impaired unless it remained constant to one object; and fixed principles, such as Positivism supplies, are needed to check the natural tendency to versatility of feeling.

I have dwelt at some length upon the personal adoration of Woman under its real or ideal aspects, because upon it depends nearly all the moral value of any public celebration. Public assemblage in the temples of Humanity may strengthen and stimulate feelings of devotion, but cannot originate them. Unless each worshipper has felt in his own person deep and reverential love for those to whom our highest affections are due, a public service in honour of women would be nothing but a repetition of unmeaning formulas. But those whose daily custom it has been to give expression to such feelings in secret, will gain, by assembling together, all the benefit of more intense and more exalted sympathy. In my last letter to her who is forever mine, I said: “Amidst the heaviest anxieties which Love can bring, I have never ceased to feel that the one thing essential to happiness is that the heart shall be always nobly occupied.”9 And now that we are separated by Death, daily experience confirms this truth, which is moreover in exact accordance with the Positive theory of human nature. Without personal experience of Love no public celebration of it can be sincere.

In its public celebration the superiority of the new Religion is even more manifest than in the private worship. A system in which the social spirit is uniformly preponderant, is peculiarly adapted to render homage for the social services of the sympathetic sex. When the knights of the Middle Ages met together, they might give vent to their personal feelings, and express to one another the reverence which each felt for his own mistress; but farther than this they could not go. And such personal feelings will never cease to be necessary. Still the principal object of public celebration is to express gratitude on the part of the people for the social blessings conferred by Woman, as the organ of that element in our nature on which its unity depends, and as the original source of moral power. In the Middle Ages such considerations were impossible, for want of a rational theory embracing the whole circle of social relations. Indeed the received faith was incompatible with any such conception, since God in that faith occupied the place really due to Humanity.

There are women whose career has been altogether exceptional; and these, like the rest, meet with their due tribute of praise in the Positive system. The chief motive, doubtless, for public and private veneration is the mission of sympathy, which is Woman’s peculiar vocation. But there have been remarkable instances of women whose life has been one of speculation, or even, what is in most cases still more foreign to their nature, of political activity. They have rendered real service to Humanity, and they should receive the honour that is due to them. Theology, from its absolute character, could not make such concessions; they would have weakened the efficiency of its most important social rules. Consequently, Catholicism was compelled, though at first with sincere regret, to leave some of the noblest women without commemoration. A signal instance is the Maid of Orleans, whose heroism saved France in the fifteenth century. Our great king Louis XI applied very properly to the Pope for her canonization, and no objection was made to his request. Yet, practically, it was never carried into effect. It was gradually forgotten; and the clergy soon came to feel a sort of dislike to her memory, which reminded them of nothing but their own social weakness. It is easy to account for this result; nor is anyone really to blame for it. It was feared, not without reason, that to consider Joan of Arc as a saint might have the effect of spreading false and dangerous ideas of feminine duty. The difficulty was insuperable for any absolute system, in which to sanction the exception is to