actions a mere source of disorder. We may regret that the order of things is not more within man's power to alter. But true wisdom forbids our wishing it to be in any part open to indefinite modification. As we advance, so far from shrinking from this inevitable yoke, we extend its range by paying to human institutions the obedience we cannot refuse to the laws of nature. These considerations lead me to the concluding part of the theory of the Great Being, the examination of the destination which its situation assigns it. That destination is, in truth, to give full effect to the action of will, in modifying, so far as they are modifiable, the conditions to which it is necessarily subject. Even when beyond its power to modify, they call for constant exertion on its part-intellectual and active exertion—the better to accommodate itself to them. Its main task, however, is the effecting the modifications within the scope of human' will, which the secondary arrangements of the world around us always admit, with the exception of the phenomena of the heavens. Our power in this respect increases as the phenomena become more complex and higher, a compensation, though an imperfect compensation, for the disadvantages attendant on the increase of dependence. On this view, the action of the Great Being has for its main object the perfecting the order of man's world, for the individual as well as for society. Hence it is that human institutions are so mixed up with the laws of nature, that by a grave mistake the dominion of the one is often confounded with that of the other two provinces. Now, the rules of man's creation depend for their value entirely on their having as their substratum natural arrangements, the legitimate sway of which it is their function to increase. Such a destination is peculiarly that of the future of Humanity, her systematic existence. Yet so appropriate is it to the Great Being, that even in the past, its age of empirical effort, with admiration we see how largely it achieved it. Its instinct led it to create: first, the Gods of antiquity, then the one God their heir, as the respective guides of the second period of its childhood and its youth. The praises offered in all sincerity to these subjective guardians are so many acts of indirect homage to the instinctive wisdom of Humanity. In substituting rational for empirical grounds, the Positive religion will This theory. is the basis for an ab stract and concrete view of the Positive Religion and the Life in accordance with it. Synthetical power of the theory. Its future efficacy may give a new being to this gratitude, and a thorough sanction, for that obligation rests upon it to see that no one of the states through which the Great Being has passed lacks its due appreeiation. In its full maturity, its direct and deliberate care for its true servants will be the object of just admiration. This habitual attitude of our minds will naturally deepen the respect deserved by its indirect and instinctive efforts to raise itself, in its earlier life, when the agents it had at its disposal were invariably blind, and often intractable. Such is the theory which forms the foundation of our construction. Sketched with sufficient precision at the outset of this work, in the subsequent volumes it was supported by statical, and completed by dynamical considerations, so as to demand in the present place nothing more than a definitive systematisation. It forms a general basis, from which we must now proceed to explain the whole system of the true religion, and with it the life which that religion is to regulate. The full success, however, of this twofold picture depends on this condition that it present two views in succession, the first abstract, dealing with human nature in each of its leading aspects; the second concrete, dealing with the actual combinations of those aspects in their most important forms. First, however, the power for synthesis inherent in the preceding theory, must be distinctly drawn out. Its value in this respect is derived from the fact that the Great Being offers, by its very constitution, the best type of unity; its composite nature precluding divergence, giving full scope to convergence. The offspring of the cooperation of the race stimulates and invigorates cooperation as the embodiment of the idea. In constant submission to the primary order, it condenses and consecrates, even whilst modifying, that order. Endowed with equal power to regulate and to unite, its empire is the source of unity in its true servants, for it impels them to identify themselves with the highest existence. Our personal instincts, concentrated in the will peculiar to our objective life, find in Humanity a guide free from all capricious tendencies, and the more so as all the impulses derived from it are in natural accordance with intelligible laws. The true providence of man has not yet been reduced to be estimated system, yet we can even now adequately understand what it by the re sults already will be, morally, intellectually, and materially. Besides, the attained. measure of its efficiency may be taken by looking to the sum of the results attained during the minority of the Great Being. Superior even then to all real existences, it appears originally placed in a circle without issue, needing, that is, a competent guide, and unable to find one outside of itself. But by its instinctive wisdom it overcame this great difficulty by a spontaneous impulse, creating imaginary guides and endowing them one after the other with the attributes adapted to their provisional function. Victorious in this trial, the being which is destined to regulate everything even then proved its ability to give regularity to its own existence, so far as its age and situation allowed. So admirable an empirical result contains the promise, for the near future, of the great results to be attained by the wisdom of Humanity when systematised,—when she has reached the stage of developement at which she can take on herself the guidance of her various servants, using to that end all the means accumulated during her past life. Such is the primary source whence the theory derives a religious efficacy, which in the rest of this chapter will appear under its more general, in the rest of the volume under its more special, aspects. Previously, however, to entering on this exposition we have to define the normal relations of the Positive religion with the two capital modes of the provisional synthesis. The relations are these we connect directly Positivism with Fetichism, not excluding astrolatrical Fetichism; we eliminate Theologism, monotheistic Theologism more especially. eliminated as individu alistic. It follows from the several explanations which had their Theologism place in the last volume, that the function of Theology was purely to prepare the way for Positivism in the spontaneous evolution of the race, that it can be no element ultimately of the normal state, as the two syntheses are incompatible. Nay, I went further, and showed that its aid was ceasing to be available henceforward wherever an individual or a nation could be submitted to wise direction. Of the two modes of causation under the provisional synthesis, it is the second or theological which, by its introduction of imaginary powers, becomes unsusceptible of any modifications of the absolute tendencies of that synthesis. Then too becomes preponderant its tendency to egeism, for its Gods step between man and Humanity, binding on him a yoke he cannot shake off, a service at all times Fetichism incorporated. Intellectually. Esthetically. inherently of a personal character. Though created in order to extend the principle of causation to the world of man, they preclude any social conception from their incapacity to embody even the idea of solidarity, much more that of continuity. On the contrary, social life is the chosen sphere of the relative religion, and therefore it has nothing in common with a purely personal religion, which owed its great social utility, in all essential points, to the wisdom of its priesthood for the time being -the priesthood of Theocracy and the priesthood of Catholicism. Still, in the most distant future, the servants of the Great Being will honour, with just honour, the guardians it created to protect its minority. Far different is the relation of the final synthesis to the primeval system of causation. I have already represented Fetichism as susceptible of an immediate connection with Positivism, with no theological interlude. Nay, I have stated that the combination was coming to be indispensable for the attainment of our definitive unity. The time is come for explaining the nature of their accord. As an intellectual question, the primary object of this ultimate fusion is to fill, as far as possible, the unavoidable gaps left by the Positive spirit in its empirical no less than in its systematic stage. It is essentially to the abstract coordination of our conceptions that laws properly apply; they almost invariably fail to express adequately the concrete facts, even though we use inductions of practice to supplement the deductions of theory. In such cases we must have recourse to causes, as in the beginning of things, as a provisional colligation of facts, bringing Fetichism to the support of Positivism. Not under the illusion that such accessory explanation corresponds to any reality, we avail ourselves of it to facilitate our necessary speculations; we are justified in acting on an instinctive tendency of our nature, which may always be reconciled with a true rational method. A real connection once formed, we throw aside the temporary support we gained, for contemplation and even meditation, by the fiction of an active will. The value of such a provisional hypothesis is still better seen from the point of view of art, for esthetically, Positivism differs from Fetichism only in that it pays its homage to results, Fetichism to materials. They find a point of accord naturally, in man's disposition to reverence in each substance or phenome non the various uses to which it may be put by the Great Being in its wisdom. Hence Positivism will offer a worthy field for the display of the poetical capacity of Fetichism, a capacity which could not pass the rudimentary stage during the infancy of the race. The two exof Humanity treme ages combined. Lastly, from the moral point of view, the combination of Morally. the two Syntheses is at once easy and fruitful in results. Fetichism, as loving all things and reverencing all things, will always be adapted largely to aid Positivism in its grand function of fostering tenderness, and giving cohesion to submission. Thus it is that in the final religion we connect directly the maturity of the Great Being with its infancy. Thus it is that we reconcile, as far as possible, real laws with imaginary wills, so that they supply each others' wants in all respects. Limited by its nature to the external world, Fetichism, unlike Theology, never claimed to represent the world of man, reserved for Positivism to grasp and to regulate. Fetichism traced the foundation of man's true wisdom, in practice and in theory, by its institution of fatalism. That it made it absolute was simply due to its ignorance of modifications, a true view of which was left for Positivism. The primeval synthesis and the definitive religion rest on one and the same fundamental principle, a principle adopted by the instinct of the race and then by its reason; they agree, that is, in proclaiming the constant predominance of feeling over thought and action. Such being their natural affinities, the two extreme ages of Humanity deserved the definitive consecration given by their both sharing in the formation of its true unity. Their fusion with a view to complete that formation I have just explained-without it. the true religion could not satisfactorily connect our future in all its stages with our remotest past-a past which invariably recurs in the spontaneous evolution of each servant of Humanity. sistency in Theologism. It might seem, however, that we are inconsistent in thus No incon incorporating Fetichism with Positivism and excluding Theo- excluding logism, springing as it does from the one, tending to the other. But there is no real inconsistency, since the two extremes admit of direct contact, and will frequently be brought into such contact, especially in individuals. The only ground for the final acceptance of Fetichism is its perfect spontaneity. When admitted it ceases to have any connection with Theologism, which never can accept the position of inferior as regards Posi |