opinion his choice may be corrected, or the acceptance of that successor be facilitated. But the preceding remarks dispense with my explaining why it is that I must still adjourn this duty, though it has twice inspired me with premature hopes. Not as yet able to find a successor, nor even a colleague, I declare that if I died without finding one, the growth of Positivism would be sounder if it relied on the free exertions of my true disciples, than under an incompetent chief. But it is permitted to me to hope that the completion of my religious construction will soon bring forward some one who may be acceptable, or, at any rate, that it will make impossible the acceptance of any literateur. : works. In terminating this great work, it is but natural that I Future should repeat the announcement with which the Philosophie Positive concludes, relative to the proper work of my second life. Of the four compositions which I had then to announce I have now accomplished, in seven years, the most vast, the most difficult, and the most important. The three others have been sufficiently described in the third chapter of this volume to make any recurrence to the subject unnecessary. Thus, before the normal period of retirement, I now enter upon a last seven years of full intellectual activity, the results of which should be in 1856, the System of Positive Logic, or, Treatise of Mathematical Philosophy; in 1859, the System of Positive Morals, or, Treatise of General Education; and in 1861, the System of Positive Industry, or, Treatise of the Combined Action of Humanity upon her Planet. Such a body of works forms a complementary construction equivalent in extent to that just accomplished. Though less difficult and less important, it were to be regretted if death or extreme poverty prevented my fulfilling a promise, formally stated so early as 1822, in the See Appensmall treatise which is the groundwork of all my subsequent writings. I am bound, then, to regard the present work as the basis of an indispensable complement, applying to myself the motto happily applied to Cæsar, a motto as suitable for the competent theorician as the great man of action: Nil actum reputans si quid superesset agendum. LUCAN, Pharsalia, ii. 658. dix, part III. FINAL INVOCATION. (SEE DEDICATION TO VOLUME I.) Non è l'affezion mia tanto profonda LIVE FOR OTHERS. LIVE OPENLY. Paris: Monday, 9 Dante, 66. (24 July, 1854.) NOBLE AND TENDER-HEARTED LADY, MY PATRONESS AND EXEMPLAR, Eight years have passed since in gratitude, in regret, and in resignation I offered to thy sacred memory an exceptional dedication, in the middle of the year of mourning, though it could not be published till five years later. What I now write is still more alien to general custom, but it will excite less surprise, for it is the termination of a construction, the chief phases of which justify, and with increasing force, such an act of homage. Perhaps thereby I may originate a new practice, a complementary institution, which will, with the public sanction, henceforth enhance the effect of the dedication proper, when worthy of any elaboration involving a succession of efforts. The involuntary delay in the publication of my original tribute was fortunately not without a compensation, in that it at once drew the sympathy of the nobler minds, as during the preceding three years the General View' had been preparing them to ratify the consecration therein announced. An analogous result is more certain now, when I here complete the holy dedication, the justice of which all competent readers have fully accepted. In the present state of mental indiscipline, this fourth volume will frequently be read, at first at any rate, when there is no acquaintance with the three others. But it suffices to justify this final homage, which will soon recall attention to the dedication of the first volume. As more systematic than either of the others, it brings into stronger relief the correlation between synthesis and sympathy, and it is to thee I owe its acceptance as a paramount influence. Each of the seven essential steps in my construction of a religion has its own distinct trace of the angelic influence acknowledged at its opening. Thy aid is undeniable in regard to the three which are distinctive of the first volume, though it be adequately recognised only for the first of the three. My fundamental work, the Philosophie, revealed beyond dispute the composite and continuous existence which sways with increasing power the course of the world. It had even gradually reached the point of proclaiming the supremacy of the heart over the intellect, as the only source, spontaneous or systematic, of human unity. The Great Being thus revealed in its nature and destination, it was enough, to render it possible to create the universal religion, that a holy love should adequately familiarise me with the basic principle in which my first life was seen to issue. So it was that the dogma of Humanity arose, on the first anniversary of the fatal event which separated us, in the decisive course of lectures from which this whole treatise 1847. springs. All who justly appreciate the filiation here traced must now acknowledge that it should be carried farther back, so as to extend to the dedication, which, a few months before, Oct. 4, 1846. gave their first formal expression to all the germs of the subsequent progress. That thy participation in the two steps which mark the second half of the first volume is less felt, is only because they have not yet become as familiar to most of my disciples. When I introduced the name Positivist, the public, in its empiricism and scepticism, judged it to be as contradictory as it was strange. In thirty years I have so raised it, that it is now sought, as a pledge of order no less than of progress, by many who do not satisfy its main conditions, Of the seven meanings which it combines, the last-and fully to feel this last I was incapable without thee is the least appreciated, though it be the most decisive, as bearing directly on the sole source of true unity. Those who most fully recognise the necessary interdependence of six of the characteristics of the Positive spirit, at once real, useful, certain, exact, organic, and even relative, have not gone so far in their regeneration as to link its intellectual claims to the moral signification of the term. But, though I still am the only one in whom Positive, thanks to thee, has become equivalent to sympathetic, I doubt not but that all my true disciples will soon follow me so far under the irresistible impulse of the synthesis but now ended. Then the Western revolution, as a whole, will find, in familiar use, its condensed expression in the complete regeneration of a fundamental term, henceforth destined to connote the highest morality, whilst retaining the advantages attaching to its originally material connotation. As foreshadowing this result I may appeal to the growing appreciation of the two complementary steps of the first volume, intellectual steps it is true, but yet evidencing directly the emotional source of the true synthesis. The systematisation of the Positive logic, by virtue of the definitive adoption of the subjective method, gives form and expression to the whole of the influence on my intellect of thy holy ascendancy. How without thee should I have duly felt that feeling alone can combine images with signs to elaborate thought, in such a way as to bring into direct connection the instinct of Fetichism and the reason of Positivism? When once it is rightly understood that thou hadst as large a share in the second step of religious Positivism as in the first, there will be little delay in tracing thy influence on the third. My construction of the cerebral theory is so intimately bound up with the institution of the subjective method, that all who by sympathy are qualified for true synthesis will feel that thy aid was indispensable in a creation which has in it more of the feminine than the masculine element. It is at this point that begins the increasing divergence between the Positivists, who style themselves intellectual, without being more intelligent, and the complete, that is to say, the religious Positivists. Although the majority of the former limit their adhesion to my philosophy, some have already advanced so far as to accept the dogma of Humanity, the connection of which with the whole of Sociology is hidden only to the sophist. Their acceptance, however, as purely intellectual, bears no fruit for them; it is not able to form the starting point for further advance, in default of a moral impulse. Hence it is that these abortive Positivists have found fault with my dedication, taxing it with sentimental exaggeration, and I doubt not that the present invocation will clash still more with their feelings, on the same ground. In their estimate of the subjective method and of the cerebral theory they differ but little from the thinkers who are so belated as to reject as ontological or mystical the dogma of Humanity, whilst admitting Sociology. Wherever there has been a just sense of the rational interconnection of the three steps which form the progression proper to my first volume, there will be no difficulty in appreciating the four other stages of religious Positivism. More particularly is the process easy in the case of the two gone through in the second volume, and principally of that one which, as occupying the centre of the regeneration by sympathy, will early be regarded as the most decisive of all. In assigning, at the opening of my social statics, the highest place in the encyclopædia to Morals, even as compared with Sociology, I systematically placed my religious construction higher than my philosophical creation, which is its groundwork, in obedience to the true theory of unity. The influence of woman, and of such influence it was for thee to offer me the highest type, appears unmistakably in this advance, the best distinction between social and intellectual Positivism. Nor is it more possible to contest thy cooperation in the next step,-- in close connection with the last,--which completes my second volume by basing the Sociocracy on the normal division of the two powers, a division which was familiar to thee, owing to thy Catholic instincts, in spite of the disturbing influences of scepticism. With difficulty should I have brought thee, with thy extreme modesty, to acknowledge the large share thou hadst in the whole of the third volume, for its province is the most remote from thy own special education. But had we been able to accomplish the noble wish thou spontaneously didst express to me, to study history synthetically, thou wouldst now feel how greatly thou aidedst me in the systematisation of my dynamical conceptions. It would be enough for thee to understand that the historical synthesis necessarily finds its condensed expression in the establishment of a direct connection between the two extreme terms of man's initiation, Fetichism and Positivism. The Vol.i. p. 612. admirable canzone which I have repeated every morning, these last nine years, is as characteristic an utterance of Fetichist poetry as thy sacred novel prefigures Positive idealisation. Vol. i. p. 602. Under so spontaneous a form of cooperation, thou couldst not have refused to accept thy involuntary share in my construction of the philosophy of history, though it is an influence not as yet recognised even by the best of my disciples. None will question thy influence in regard to the seventh step, which in this volume closes the regular upward ascent of |