collective adoration paid to the Grand Etre. People are to be taught to
look forward to this as a sufficient recompense for the devotion of a
whole life to the service of Humanity. Seven years after death, comes
the last Sacrament: a public judgment, by the priesthood, on the memory
of the defunct. This is not designed for purposes of reprobation, but of
honour, and any one may, by declaration during life, exempt himself from
it. If judged, and found worthy, he is solemnly incorporated with the
Grand Etre, and his remains are transferred from the civil to the
religious place of sepulture: "le bois sacre" qui doit entourer chaque
temple de l'Humanite."

This brief abstract gives no idea of the minuteness of M. Comte's
prescriptions, and the extraordinary height to which he carries the
mania for regulation by which Frenchmen are distinguished among
Europeans, and M. Comte among Frenchmen. It is this which throws an
irresistible air of ridicule over the whole subject. There is nothing
really ridiculous in the devotional practices which M. Comte recommends
towards a cherished memory or an ennobling ideal, when they come
unprompted from the depths of the individual feeling; but there is
something ineffably ludicrous in enjoining that everybody shall practise
them three times daily for a period of two hours, not because his
feelings require them, but for the premeditated, purpose of getting his
feelings up. The ludicrous, however, in any of its shapes, is a
phaenomenon with which M. Comte seems to have been totally unacquainted.
There is nothing in his writings from which it could be inferred that he
knew of the existence of such things as wit and humour. The only writer
distinguished for either, of whom he shows any admiration, is Moliere,
and him he admires not for his wit but for his wisdom. We notice this
without intending any reflection on M. Comte; for a profound conviction
raises a person above the feeling of ridicule. But there are passages in
his writings which, it really seems to us, could have been written by no
man who had ever laughed. We will give one of these instances. Besides
the regular prayers, M. Comte's religion, like the Catholic, has need of
forms which can be applied to casual and unforeseen occasions. These, he
says, must in general be left to the believer's own choice; but he
suggests as a very suitable one the repetition of "the fundamental
formula of Positivism," viz., "l'amour pour principe, l'ord