; and moreover, eternal constancy is required by the
posthumous adoration, which is to be continuously paid by the survivor
to one who, though objectively dead, still lives "subjectively." The
domestic spiritual power, which resides in the women of the family, is
chiefly concentrated in the most venerable of them, the husband's
mother, while alive. It has an auxiliary in the influence of age,
represented by the husband's father, who is supposed to have passed the
period of retirement from active life, fixed by M. Comte (for he fixes
everything) at sixty-three; at which age the head of the family gives up
the reins of authority to his son, retaining only a consultative voice.

This domestic Spiritual Power, being principally moral, and confined to
a private life, requires the support and guidance of an intellectual
power exterior to it, the sphere of which will naturally be wider,
extending also to public life. This consists of the clergy, or
priesthood, for M. Comte is fond of borrowing the consecrated
expressions of Catholicism to denote the nearest equivalents which his
own system affords. The clergy are the theoretic or philosophical class,
and are supported by an endowment from the State, voted periodically,
but administered by themselves. Like women, they are to be excluded from
all riches, and from all participation in power (except the absolute
power of each over his own household). They are neither to inherit, nor
to receive emolument from any of their functions, or from their writings
or teachings of any description, but are to live solely on their small
salaries. This M. Comte deems necessary to the complete
disinterestedness of their counsel. To have the confidence of the
masses, they must, like the masses, be poor. Their exclusion from
political and from all other practical occupations is indispensable for
the same reason, and for others equally peremptory. Those occupations
are, he contends, incompatible with the habits of mind necessary to
philosophers. A practical position, either private or public, chains the
mind to specialities and details, while a philosopher's business is with
general truths and connected views (vues d'ensemble). These, again,
require an habitual abstraction from details, which unfits the mind for
judging well and rapidly of individual cases. The same person cannot be
both a good theorist and a good practitioner or ruler, though
practitioners and rulers ought to have a solid theoretic