nough. Utility remains the test of every institution, impulse,
act; his fabric becomes substantially an arch of utilitarian
propositions, with an artificial Great Being inserted at the top to keep
them in their place. The Comtist system is utilitarianism crowned by a
fantastic decoration. Translated into the plainest English, the position
is as follows: "Society can only be regenerated by the greater
subordination of politics to morals, by the moralization of capital, by
the renovation of the family, by a higher conception of marriage and 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 the 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,
&c., 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superseded" by the abstract idea of Humanity, conceived as a kind of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
effe