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period would not afford scope for the adequate glorification of the past. Still, the better to fulfil this condition, it is desirable during these three months, as a preparation for the abstract ceremony of the Sunday, to fix a concrete one on the Thursday, in honour of the highest representative of the period under consideration.

This commemoration as a whole would appear most appropriate to the opening period of our maturity, to recall it to the sense of continuity which has been more and more falling into abeyance, especially in the West since the advent of Monotheism. And yet the most distant future will never, nor in any place, cease to commemorate the indispensable initiation of the race, limited though it was in its later stages to the nations on which devolved the task of shaping the whole social economy. Not only will the training of the individual in all cases repeat the leading features of the preparation; but the heart and the intellect will agree in honouring the first life of the Great Being, the perfectibility of its nature ever reminding us of a beginning which is a title to glory.

No period of man's existence on earth but must find its place in the worship, and yet the historical division of that worship will never receive any considerable addition; hence even now we may give it its definitive form. For, the normal state once fully established, its onward movement, continuous though gradual, will necessarily escape the marked changes of the preparatory period. The stronger the stimulus given by this dynamical period to the instincts of progress, the more complete also must be its control of those instincts, by implanting the conviction, that the anarchical advance of our educational age subsides, in the normal state, into the developement of order with the aim of consolidating it.

The limits then of the historical portion of Sociolatry are irremovably fixed, and I have now to explain in detail its three constituents.

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month.

The definitive fusion of the Fetichist in the Positive spirit The seventh does not supersede the necessity of an historical commemora- Fetichism. tion of the infancy of Humanity. In fact, the absorption of Fetichism is limited to its principles, and does not extend to its institutions, which perished utterly with the state of things to which they were adapted. Regarding Fetichism as sponta

Spontaneous
Fetichism.
(1) Nomad,

(2) Sedentary.

Systematic
Fetichism.

(1) Sacer-
dotal.

neous Positivism in its earliest stage, the systematic worship of Humanity devotes to it the whole of the seventh month.

The nomad period was longer in duration than any other, and laid the main foundations of all human education; this we must not forget; yet as by the nature of the case the documents relating to it are inadequate, we only give the first week to its distinct commemoration. The object of the Sunday's ceremonial will be, to produce a just sense of the benefits, transient or permanent, conferred on the race by this initial period; a period with which we shall always feel a sympathy, as recalling our natural fondness for the wandering life of the hunter and the shepherd. The Sunday, however, were incomplete without the preparatory festival on the Thursday, devoted to the capital fact of man's alliance with the sociable animals, special honour being paid to the association, in succession, of the dog, the horse, and the ox-the three types round which the rest may be grouped.

During the second week, we commemorate the irrevocable adoption of the sedentary state, the state, that is, which was indispensably requisite as the condition of all ulterior advance, intellectual and even moral advance, quite as much as material. The ceremony of the Thursday is a special homage to Fire, the institution on which depended primarily our progress in all three respects; language perpetuates the memory of its introduction by borrowing from it the words which in ordinary use are characteristic of existence and religion, Foyer and Fête. Then on the Sunday, agricultural life, the common basis of industry and of commerec, has its ideal presentation, greatest stress being laid on the charm of its earliest spontaneous beginnings, its poetical and moral attraction, where the milieu was favourable to a prolongation of the Fetichist state.

The second half of the month must be given to systematic Fetichism, of which Astrolatry is the characteristic, and the origin of which is in the sedentary life, for that gave rise to the priesthood as a developement of the earlier institution, the elders. Though this period was naturally less durable than its predecessor, its commemoration deserves an equal space, owing to its being the indispensable source of Theologism, under the military form as well as under the sacerdotal. When it glorifies the results of Astrolatry, Sociolatry will not fail freely to express the lasting regret due to the violent extinction of the

great, if primitive, astrolatrical societies in Malayia and America. The third Thursday of the month of Fetichism will prepare the way for the commemoration of its systematic form by a festival in memory of the worship of the sun, such a The Sun. festival as may appeal to the heart in favour of the deep reasonableness of that worship, purely instinctive though it was. So prepared, the ceremony of the Sunday will be the abstract glorification of the astrolatrical state, the true source of the polytheistic Theocracy; which lasted even throughout Monotheism, down to the rise of the doctrine of the earth's movement, the immediate basis of Positivism. This first historical (2) Military. month closes with the commemoration of military Astrolatry, which, when it found a milieu suitable to it, was the preliminary of the system of conquest peculiar to Polytheism. On the Iron. Thursday previous to its commemoration, a special festival is allotted to the introduction of iron, the large use of which was originally for military purposes, but which was ultimately destined to play the leading part in our industrial progress.

month.

Polytheism.

All the main aspects of its preparatory period thus re- The eighth cognised, the way is clear for the commemoration of the second childhood of the race, the period of Polytheism and War; (1) Theoand to this the eighth month is devoted; setting apart the cracy. first Sunday for the veneration of Theocracy, to which we ascribe the most decisive influence in our initiation. The preceding Thursday commemorates more particularly the institution of Caste, the general basis of the theocratic system, and Caste. destined, notwithstanding constant modifications, to be the essential guarantee of order until the advent of the definitive Sociocracy. The caste system will be an object of just sympathy with our most remote posterity, a sympathy finding vent in the recognition of the affinities due to similarity of profession, though no longer needing the corroboration of hereditary transmission.

tual Poly

tic.

Its due honour paid to conservative Polytheism, in the (1) Intellecsecond week, we begin, on the Thursday, the commemoration theism. of intellectual Polytheism, with the festival of its three highest artistic organs: Homer, Eschylus, and Phidias. From this (a) Estheintroduction we pass, on the Sunday, to the abstract glorification of its whole poetic movement, which, breaking the yoke of Theocracy, then become retrograde, worthily inaugurated the Western transition, not without a presentiment, even at that period, of Sociocracy. As a preparation for the celebration of Scienti

fic.

the strictly intellectual advance, the following Thursday is the festival of its seven principal representatives; first its philosophical types: Thales, Pythagoras, and Aristotle; then its scientific: Hippocrates, Archimedes, Apollonius, Hipparchus. The Sunday will then suffice for our abstract idealisation of the intellectual construction, which, though provisional or introductory, was yet in the strictest sense decisive; for the genius of the West made it the inauguration of the systematic scientific creation, needed as the preamble of the Religion of Humanity. But on the morrow, we must place an extraordinary festival in honour of the battle of Salamis, and Themistocles as its personal representative, with Alexander to complete the conception; thus satisfying the full claims of intellectual Polytheism by celebrating the struggle which it could not avoid, and preparing the way for the glorification of social Polytheism. We enter on this, the following Thursday, with the festival of the Polytheism. three great types of the military society: Scipio, Cæsar, and Trajan, worthy to be the precursors of Sociocracy by virtue of the high value they set upon peace. This enables us to consider the last Sunday as sufficient for the abstract commemoration of the Roman system of incorporation, the system under which the noblest of our ancestors prepared the way for the direct introduction of the normal order, by their preference of action to speculation, of public to private life.

(iii) Social or Military

The ninth month.

Monotheism.

tic or Judaic.

The proper object of the ninth month is the glorification of the adolescence of Humanity; yet it must begin by honouring (i) Theocra- the peculiar form of Monotheism which arose as an offshoot of the true Theocracy; and that because in the East no less than in the West it has been intimately connected with Monotheism in its typical form. As a preliminary to its idealisation, the first Thursday is a festival in honour of its highest types: Abraham, Moses, and Solomon, the only personal representatives of the theocratic state in the imperfect presentation of it consequent on the monotheistic alloy; for their noble abnegation of self allows no pure theocratic types. On the following Sunday, the worshippers of the Great Being will, to the end of time, recognise with sympathy the services of the devoted Jews, not unprepared, as a natural result of their dispersion, for the acceptance of the religion of Humanity, as alone able to honour and raise their race, by making reparation for the stigmas fixed on it by ingratitude.

(ii) Catholic.

For the adequate idealisation of Monotheism in its defen

sive period, the entire second week is not more than is required, the six days of concrete festivals being allotted to its highest individual organs: St. Paul, Charlemagne, Alfred, Hildebrand, Godfrey, and lastly St. Bernard, its most perfect type. This last festival leads, on the morrow, to an exceptional one, embodying in an individual type the systematic glorification of the Middle Ages, without detriment to its abstract character, by concentrating it on the gentle worship which was the The Virgin, condensed expression of Catholicism and Chivalry. Accustomed, as a result of their whole education, to venerate the Virgin as the spontaneous emblem of Humanity, the servants of Humanity will, by this concentration, be enabled to feel more deeply the emotional period of the Western transition.

hammedan.

The indispensable preparation of the universal Religion, if (iii) Mohonoured duly, requires that the following week be set apart for a fitting commemoration of Islamic Monotheism, the only possible precursor of Positivism in the East. The Thursday therefore is the festival of Mohammed, the incomparable founder of Islam; who felt, in a higher degree than all other reformers, the provisional character and the limited adaptation of the religious construction by which he trained noble nations for the final state. For the Sunday is appointed the abstract commemoration of Islam; the setting forth the intellectual and moral benefits inherent in the monotheistic fusion of the temporal and spiritual powers; benefits not lost by the temporary delay that fusion at first enforced upon the Orientals. To complete the picture of the filiation, an extraordinary festival on the Monday commemorates the battle of Lepanto, the last glorious effort of the military instinct, the true complement of Salamis. When the descendants of the Mussulmans and the descendants Lepanto. of the Catholics shall be united by the Positive religion, it is the Mussulman, rather than the Catholic, that will attach most value to the day which marked the close of his military career and inaugurated his industrial existence.

physical.

Finally, the last week of the three months devoted to history (iv) Metamust commemorate the Western revolution in its entirety: the period, that is, in which political anarchy contributed to the elaboration, in both the spiritual and temporal order, of the immediate elements of the definitive system. To admit of a satisfactory abstract idealisation, on the Sunday, of the movement, as at once organic and critical, the first requisite is, that

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