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The presirals accords cerebral con

dency of Mo

with the

stitution of

This, the definitive constitution of the human Synthesis, may with advantage be condensed in a form suggested by its inevitable agreement with the constitution of the human brain. Whilst ever asserting the complete supremacy of feeling, I have man. been compelled hitherto to concentrate the attention mainly on intellect and action as the dominant sociological forces. But with the growth of these beyond dispute, comes the period for their taking their true place in the human system, an ultimate destination which leads to the explicit recognition of the preponderance of feeling as the independent domain of morals.

The object tion of the

and connec

five chapters

of the

volume.

ject.

After indicating the general character of this fourth volume as devoted to the direct construction of the Positive religion, a statement of the object and connection of its five chapters is required for the completeness of this introduction. Taken together, their ultimate object is to lay the foundations General obfor a policy capable of directing on system the unsystematic advance of each people towards the normal state, the time for which, as I have shown, is come. But the direct construction of this policy must be reserved for the last chapter, as it requires for its basis a sketch of the human order more complete at once, and more exact than the primary outline drawn in our social statics. In its larger half the volume deals with this capital operation, an operation which is of itself the inauguration of the state it describes; for what is the maturity of the race but its hitherto spontaneous action reduced to system? A satisfactory conception of the general future of Humanity thus attained, the proximate phase of that future will become quite intelligible, and as such will make it clear what in detail is to be the course of the transitional period of organisation.

Examine these two consecutive operations, and it will appear that the essence of the one is the exposition of the definitive religion, of the other its application in the present. So real and so complete is the Positive synthesis, that its true exposition involves the definite presentation of the adult age of Humanity, just as the indispensable preparation for that synthesis represents its age of initiation.

For a satisfactory exposition of the religion of Humanity, the guide of our maturity under all aspects, we need first to grasp it as a whole, then to survey each of its essential constituents. Hence the first chapter establishes directly the

The objects

of the

chapters suc

cessively.

Relation of Vol. iv. to the preceding volumes.

Effects of

this primacy of morals.

fundamental theory of the Great Being, and as a consequence gives a general view of man's normal existence. Proceeding from this synthetical basis, we have in the second chapter the system of worship, in the third that of the doctrine, in the fourth that of the life, thus regulating the three elements of our nature, feeling, intellect, and activity. Then in the fifth and last chapter we intercalate the present between the future and the past, in order to close the Western Revolution, and in order to avoid its recurrence or reproduction in the rest of the world. So the volume as a whole, condensed in a general conclusion, on which follows the conclusion of the whole work, is destined to inaugurate definitively the Positive Religion as a consequence of its direct exposition of that religion, triumphantly applied to practice.

Such a statement is for the present sufficient to produce the sense that the fourth volume is adapted to fuse and to complete the leading conceptions of the three others, in accordance with the spirit of the General View.' In it my religious construction and the philosophy on which it rests as its foundation, will be at once marked off from one another by the definitive transfer to Morals of the encyclopædic primacy originally assigned to Sociology in the proper sense of the term. Sociocracy, the ultimate, must thus be brought into connection with Theocracy, the initial stage of the race, and closes the period of transition which separates the two, a period of ever deepening revolution, the leading characteristic of which has been the growing tendency of intellect to rebel against feeling.

The paramount position thus irreversibly assigned to Morals issues in the subjection of man's life at length to a real and complete discipline, a discipline in constant harmony with his true wants. The relative character distinctive of that discipline does not make it less regular; far otherwise, it gives it strength and vigour, as it eliminates caprice as well as all absolute tendencies by allowing for the just influence of time, by making, that is, our dynamical conceptions ultimately react on our statical principles. Man's emotional nature wears an appearance of unchangeability, but this is but an appearance; it is inevitably subject to constant modifications, slower it may be, but as regular as those of his intellect and his activity, the progress of which again, it should be remembered, bears upon

the means which feeling employs. The creation of Positive Ethics, the work of this volume, will as a natural consequence bring into relief the truth, that throughout the phenomena of human life, equally as with all other phenomena, movement and existence are radically at one. The natural result of making the emotional nature finally paramount will be to establish a complete agreement between theory and practice, as the impulse given by either concurs with that simultaneously derived from the other, both together aiding us in our systematic conception of the normal state and the last phase of the transition. The indispensable convergence of the two will appear in this volume to be a necessary deduction from our primary principle, that in all cases considerations of progress are subordinate to those of order. This law applies equally to the art and science of Morals; we have only to extend to the improvements of our own creation a relation originally manifested in changes over which we had no control.

In my judgment of the future and the present, I need not aim at a greater degree of exactness than that attainable in the preceding volumes in the treatment respectively of order and progress. Though merely approximative, it is sufficient for any immediate want. When succeeding generations come to need more detailed rules, they will draw them from moral science by the aid of an advance in sociological science, such advance at times involving a corresponding progress in Biology, perhaps even in Cosmology.

TRODUCTION,

pp. 8-23.

The Priest

hood of Hu

embrace the

future as well as the

past.

CHAPTER I.

THE FUNDAMENTAL THEORY, THE THEORY OF THE GREAT BEING;
WHENCE A CONSPECTUS OF THE RELIGION OF THE RACE AND

OF ITS EXISTENCE IN THE NORMAL STATE.

SPECIAL IN ITS foundations laid in Social Statics, the Positive religion has already irrevocably taken possession of the Past in its whole range, which never was within the cognisance of the earlier manity must and absolute synthesis. As a sequel of this decisive step the priesthood of Humanity must now take possession of the Future also, that it may impart to the Present the combined impulse of its predecessors and its successors. It will then have completed its attributions by the addition of a new and equally characteristic function-the function of the prophet-to its primary office of judge, and so complete, it will soon overcome the existing anarchy, unprecedented though it be, for it will bring to bear on that object in permanent combination the whole intellectual and moral powers of man.

Functions of the Priest

of its compe

The spiritual power of the West in its three social attrihood. Test butes of counsel, consecration, and regulation has more and tence. more fallen into desuetude since the end of the Middle Ages, by virtue of the gradual downfall of the provisional beliefs. Raised to new life by the definitive belief, its future course will be one of unceasing and efficient action. The necessity of its revival is now submitted to the most unambiguous of tests, viz. its exclusive competence to thoroughly reconcile order and progress.

Difficulty of reconciling Order with Progress shown bistorically.

For an adequate estimate of the difficulty of this task, we must place ourselves at the historical point of view, as we are enabled to do by the preceding volume. The past is divisible into two great periods: the one, common in its essential features to all nations, includes Fetichism and Theocracy; the other, peculiar to the Western nations, effects as a spontaneous process the transition from Theocracy to Sociocracy. Now the two

periods, as successive stages of the education of the race, represent the one, order, the other, progress; and it is the existing discord between order and progress that expresses in its latest form the inevitable opposition of the East and the West. For the order compatible with man's initiation, taken as a whole, was really alone attained under the theocratic organisation, in which we have the true source of the opinions which in many respects still govern the Western mind. On the other hand, all the progress in speculation, in action, and in affection made by the West during the last thirty centuries has been more and more revolutionary in its character, as is most strikingly shown in the system of election and the impairment of the sense of continuity. If the close of the Middle Ages is always to be taken as marking the beginning of the Western revolution, it is so taken only because that is the epoch at which the movement passed into anarchy, on the exhaustion of Catholicism, the latest form of the provisional synthesis. But the three partial evolutions which succeeded one another previously had been in no real sense organic, save as regarded one particular aspect of our nature, to the sacrifice of the other two; none of the three could offer the peculiar completeness which attached to the discipline of Theocracy.

The Initiation of the race, then, under the auspices of the theological synthesis, first establishes order, but an order which has an increasing tendency to become retrograde, sanctioning, though unable to attain, entire fixity; then progress, but a progress which grew more and more revolutionary, a progress incompatible with unity. It was not till the latest phase of modern anarchy that the true principle of the movement of society could take a definite form and statement, the entire completion of the training process being the necessary condition of such statement. Hence its first proclamation had a tendency to sanction an indefinite agitation more alien to human nature, whether in the individual or in the society, than the stagnation of Theocracy. If this tendency were to remain unchecked, it would seem that in the future the two necessities of Humanity, order and progress, far from combining, would but stand in more systematic opposition, and so there would be renewed, in an aggravated form, the spontaneous divergence manifested in the past. Whilst retrograde theologians are alarmed at the thought that nothing short of miracle can

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