rites, "je tentai de fonder
le nouveau pouvoir spirituel que j'institue aujourd'hui." "Ma politique,
loin d'etre aucunement opposee a ma philosophie, en constitue tellement
la suite naturelle que celle-ci fut directement instituee pour servir de
base a celle-la, comme le prouve cet appendice."[27]

This is quite true. In the remarkable essay entitled "Considerations sur
le Pouvoir spirituel," published in March 1826, Comte advocates the
establishment of a "modern spiritual power," which, he anticipates, may
exercise an even greater influence over temporal affairs, than did the
Catholic clergy, at the height of their vigour and independence, in the
twelfth century. This spiritual power is, in fact, to govern opinion,
and to have the supreme control over education, in each nation of the
West; and the spiritual powers of the several European peoples are to be
associated together and placed under a common direction or "souverainete
spirituelle."

A system of "Catholicism _minus_ Christianity" was therefore completely
organized in Comte's mind, four years before the first volume of the
"Philosophie Positive" was written; and, naturally, the papal spirit
shows itself in that work, not only in the ways I have already
mentioned, but, notably, in the attack on liberty of conscience which
breaks out in the fourth volume:--

"Il n'y a point de liberte de conscience en astronomie, en
physique, en chimie, en physiologie meme, en ce sens que chacun
trouverait absurde de ne pas croire de confiance aux principes
etablis dans les sciences par les hommes competents."

"Nothing in ultramontane Catholicism" can, in my judgment, be more
completely sacerdotal, more entirely anti-scientific, than this dictum.
All the great steps in the advancement of science have been made by just
those men who have not hesitated to doubt the "principles established in
the sciences by competent persons;" and the great teaching of
science--the great use of it as an instrument of mental discipline--is
its constant inculcation of the maxim, that the sole ground on which any
statement has a right to be believed is the impossibility of refuting
it.

Thus, without travelling beyond the limits of the "Philosophie
Positive," we find its author contemplating the establishment of a
system of society, in which an organized spiritual power shall over-ride
and direct the temporal power, as completely as the Innocents and
Gregorys tried to govern