of the individual effort masks the influence of the collective, the sublimity of the results of that effort removes the mask, as is evidenced by the incomparable poem in which Dante, under the stimulus of the Middle Ages, has unconsciously embodied the whole system of Catholicism. It is a consequence of the indivisibility which characterises human nature that each particular proof of the highest Unity, Humanity, strengthens all the others, and might logically serve in lieu of them, but that it is wiser to multiply demonstrations inseparably bound up with our noblest emotions. All the current sophisms, of anarchical or retrograde origin, against the accumulating evidence of the existence of Humanity, are inherently self-contradictory, in that the very language in which the blasphemy finds vent is of all human constructions the most social. And no protest has yet been consequent enough to dare to deny also the existence of the Family or the Country, both equally with Humanity, by their nature composite beings, composite whether we regard coexistence or succession, only more limited in extent, and so facilitating our perception of co-operation.

Utility.

That the conception of Humanity and the feelings it evokes (6) Its are useful—this is a point which the individualist, be he theologian or metaphysician, can hardly dispute as he disputes their reality. The more sincere among them do not dispute it; they limit themselves to asserting the superiority of their Synthesis as regards man's interests in the other world, leaving this world to the wise guidance of Positivism, which accepts the arrangement. Impracticable, so long as the government of the world we know necessarily vested in theologians of some denomination or other, this final settlement is inevitable when rivals appear, avowing a contemptuous indifference to heaven, and concentrating with dignity their interest upon earth. Then it is at once generally felt, that to govern the world we require on the one hand the knowledge of its laws, on the other, a real interest in its destinies. Exiles in a world governed by unintelligible caprice,-all who so look on themselves are by that very fact incapable of swaying it, for they can as little imagine its future as they can interpret its past. But the exclusive competence of the Positivist conception for the direction of human affairs may be best shown by reference to the question of universality, a question distinctly broached twenty

Successive

germs of the

centuries ago, but not answered. It awaits its answer from Humanity, the older Synthesis having evidently failed.

It were needless to dwell longer on these two general proconception. perties of reality and utility, they will come out more and more clearly as we proceed. Before proceeding, however, to the direct statement of the theory of the Great Being, I must here pass in review, in regular order, the germs of that conception. It is of importance, in the case of this basic principle, to bring out with more than usual distinctness the filiation of ideas; a point always to be attended to in synthetical conceptions.

The fact of man's living in society led, at an early period, Feeling to a rudimentary conception, without any rational basis, of Humanity. Pure Fetichism was unable, it is true, to get beyond the family, but within that sphere it gave distinct expression to continuity, primarily in reference to the coming generation, but extending it subsequently to the preceding, a progress dating from the institution of the Elders. But it was more especially civic existence, in which alone there could be a satisfactory developement of the intellect and activity, which originated the tendency, inherent in every human society, to consider itself the nucleus of Humanity. Polytheism-Conservative Polytheism-gave a direct encouragement to this aspiration after universality by the comprehensiveness of its synthesis. The intellectual Polytheism called out the esthetic and scientific powers of man, an implicit foreshadowing of the general convergence of his efforts. The social Polytheism awoke a sense, never again to be lost, of this convergence of the Race, by its successful organisation, under the only form then practically admissible, of collective action. The last step was taken, and the course of preparation was complete, when Monotheism formed a spiritual union between a number of nations politically independent.

In spite of the anarchy of post-Catholic times, this general result of the education of mankind tended gradually to assume a systematic shape, in consequence of the general adoption of the only form of intellectual and practical activity which is susceptible of universal acceptance. The utter collapse of the theological and military regime was really favourable to this tendency, as it evidenced the want of a synthesis based on positive science and peace. In the latest phase of the Western

revolution, the twofold movement of destruction and reconstruction threw up successively the germs from which immediately sprang the systematic conception of the Great Being.

This capital advance, marking as it did the point at which the intellect at length overtook the feeling of man, was due to the undesigned concurrence of three general propositions, enunciated respectively by Pascal, Leibnitz, and Condorcet. Although originating solely in the scientific evolution, the first was an adequate expression of the convergence of the whole past towards the present, as it likened the developement of the race to that of an individual. The second perfected the inchoate notion of the progression which concerns man, by making the future depend on the present. The two together formed the introduction to the third, the logical conclusion from which is the direct conception of Humanity, for it conceives of the species as one single people. The three are the immediate precursors of the definitive systematisation reserved for me, the systematisation in which one and the same principle is to serve as the condensed expression of the feelings, thoughts, and actions peculiar to Humanity.

The three aperçus of

preliminary

Pascal, Leib

nitz, Con

dorcet.

Humanity.

The Great Being is the whole constituted by the beings, Definition of past, future, and present, which co-operate willingly in perfecting the order of the world. Every gregarious animal race has a natural tendency to such co-operation. But it is only the paramount race on each planet that can attain unity as a race, for its ascent to power necessarily checks that of the lower animals. This justifies, in our systematic definition of the composite being, our omitting its peculiar species. On the other hand, the spontaneity of the co-operation and its external end are clearly indispensable conditions, if it is to be consistent and permanent. Eliminating, then, what may be understood without indistinctness, we confine our definition of the Great Being to the continuous whole formed by the beings which converge. In this condensed form I shall often make implicit use of the definition, leaving it to the reader to reintegrate the terms suppressed.

Humanity.

Starting from this definition, the theory of the Great Being Theory of resolves itself into (1) its constitution, (2) its position, (3) its destination.

And first for its constitution. The great point is to dis- (1) Constitinguish between the peculiar constituent elements, immediate Distinction

tution.

between elements

or mediate, of the supreme organism, and the agents or repreand agents. sentatives it requires. Every being must be composed of parts similar to itself, so Humanity is divisible primarily into States, then into Families, never into individuals.

Theelements subordinate

to Human

ity.

Our race was educated under a synthesis at once egoistic to the whole, and absolute, succeeded by a period of anarchy. Hence its lack of conceptions and formulas adequate to express a reality which has slowly dawned upon us. The consequence is a proneness to look on the parts as more important than the whole, though the whole alone, and not the parts, admits of completeness and permanence. The true Synthesis will modify this frame of mind and enable us to overcome our earlier habits, so that the opposite tendency, as alone consistent with the Positive spirit, will become natural to us. Familiar as we shall then be with the idea of Humanity, in this new state of regenerated mental power we shall constantly refer to that idea the subordinate ideas of People and even of Family, in obedience to the principle of passing from the more definite to the less definite conception. Even now it is not difficult to understand this, as it is the course we spontaneously adopt in the case of the animals: we refer them to the human type, at least in regard to their principal attributes. By a like process in the case of our own species, we judge each family by the standard of the people of which it is a part. That we do not adopt this course with nations is owing solely to the fact that we do not adequately realise the highest form of human existence.

Humanity

alone not indistinct nor arbitrary.

That highest form is in fact the only one of which we can form a conception, free at once from indistinctness and arbitrariness. All partial associations, on however vast a scale, are but parts, and parts inseparable, save by a process of abstraction, from the whole race. The limits which seem natural to the several nations, or even families, are but the expression of those relations which have hitherto excited attention. But if we take into account all their real relations, direct and indirect, we see that the distinctions between them have no real foundation in nature. At any rate we may assert confidently that the contact between the nations has become so extended at the present time, that no one is really separable from the others. If it seem capable of separate existence, it is to the detriment of its true attributes, moral, intellectual, and even physical, all

of which, in their different degrees, are affected by the continuous reaction of the whole upon its parts. The remark is still more applicable to families; each family is, to begin with, inseparable from the people to which it belongs.

The race alone, then, admits of a clear and precise definition; the subordinate associations prepare that definition by their mutual relations and by familiarising us with those relations. Each of them has been the nucleus, actual or virtual, of Humanity, and will never lose its value as an aid to its less systematic conception. The two essential attributes of all social existence, solidarity and continuity, are necessarily attributes of the lower forms of that existence; we meet them there, not, it is true, as perfectly developed, but more within our grasp. Thus it is that the Family and the Country will always be, to the intellect no less than to the heart, indispensable introductions to Humanity. But in systematic education, in default of which the process is incomplete, we must henceforth invert the order; now that we have reached the full conception of the Great Being, we may spread it even to our children, without retracing the series of unsystematised efforts originally required for its elaboration. The essential point is to use more skilfully the power inherent in feeling to outstrip the generalising of the intellect, a result ensured in the Positive system of education by placing it throughout under the proper natural control of the sex in which feeling is predominant.

indivisible.

The conclusion we have reached is this: we definitively Humanity look on the Family and the State as each in due order an introduction to Humanity; we do not consider this indivisible being as composed of elements in the proper sense of the word. The philosophical conception once sufficiently accepted, the priesthood will abandon any formal definition. It is needed now as against the extraordinary pressure brought to bear on any movement in a synthetical direction by the anarchical spirit of analysis which prevails.

subject to

growth and

improve

Further we must not forget that the highest existence, Humanity equally with the lower forms of vitality, is subject to the two the law of laws of growth and improvement, these phases being more the law of marked in the more complex organism. Hence a new obstacle ment. It to our grasping the idea of a being of so pre-eminently relative fore be adult a character, so long as we are under the sway of habits formed be rightly under the absolute Synthesis. They lead us to forget that

must there

before it can

judged.