Most conspicuous of the non-Catholic sects of Brazil, thanks less to their numbers than to their political power and high intelligence, are the Positivists. Auguste Comte, a Parisian mathematician who spent part of his life in an insane asylum and the rest in penning voluminous explanations of a “positive philosophy” which even the mathematical mind seems to find difficulty in comprehending, suffered the customary fate of the prophet in his own country. “Paris,” according to his Brazilian disciples, “was not prepared for so advanced a doctrine.” In most other countries he won only scattered followers—George Eliot and her lover were among them—but in Brazil his doctrine not only survives but seems likely to increase its standing before it goes the way of other ’isms. Positivist propaganda began in Brazil during our Civil War, but was some time in getting a footing. Finally the “Littréists” Miguel Lemos and Teixeira Mendes became converts, the former becoming the head of the sect in Brazil and the latter—now his successor—his chief lieutenant. But it was Benjamin Constant Botelho de Magalhães who raised Positivism to a political force, first teaching it more or less secretly in the Military School and combining with it the demand for a republican form of government until, in 1889, the sect joined with the army in overthrowing the monarchy. The Brazilian Positivists credit themselves with establishing the republic, separating the church from the state, reforming the teaching and criminal codes, and many lesser accomplishments.
Strictly speaking Positivism does not pretend to be a religion but merely a “philosophy of life.” Yet it bears many reminders of the Puritanical and reforming sects so numerous in our own land. Positivists advocated the abolition of slaves; they are opposed to the lottery; they demanded an easier form of civil marriage in the hope of cutting down illegitimate unions—in other words, they combine religion and morals, which are so completely divorced in the ruling church of South America. They are popularly reputed to be opposed to the use of coffee or tobacco and to take that “blue law” view of life into which our Puritan virus shows frequent tendencies to degenerate, but this they claim to be mere ridicule or counter-propaganda of their enemies.
I arranged by a “want ad” to exchange English for Portuguese lessons with a well-educated native of Rio, who turned out to be a government functionary and a Positivist. Possibly the most striking thing about him was his almost Protestant moral code, contrasted with his genuinely Brazilian tolerance in practice. He saw nothing reprehensible in cheating the public out of more than half the time and effort which they paid him to deliver; he asserted that he and Brazilians in general believed their wives certain to betray them if given the opportunity, and refused to credit my statement that the average American husband does not consider eternal vigilance the price of his domestic honor. Yet often in the same breath he pronounced some Positivist precept that would fit snugly into the code of our sternest sects.
I accompanied my student-tutor one Sunday morning to the principal weekly service at the Positivist Apostulado, or “Temple of Humanity” in the Rua Benjamin Constant. It is an imposing building in the style of a Greek temple, said to be copied from the Panthéon of Paris. On the façade is the Positivist motto in large bronze letters:
O Amor por Principio
E a Ordem por Baze
O Progresso por Fim.
Inside, the almost luxurious edifice, “sea-green in color, as if one were bathed in hope, and with the high ceiling essential to lofty thoughts,” still somewhat resembles a Catholic church. Around the walls of the nave are fourteen “chapels” containing as many busts, each representing one of the “saints” of Positivism and an abstract idea. They are Moses—Initial Theocracy; Homer—Ancient Poetry; Aristotle—Ancient Philosophy; Archimedes—Science; Cæsar—Military Civilization; St. Paul—Catholicism; Charlemagne—Feudal Civilization; Guttenberg—Modern Invention; Dante—Modern Epic; Shakespeare—Drama; Descartes—Modern Philosophy; Frederick the Great—Modern Politics; Bichat—Modern Science, and lastly, Eloïse, or Feminine Sanctification. It would be easy, of course, to quarrel with the Positivists on several of their choices as world leaders, were they of a quarrelsome disposition. These personages also give their names to the fourteen months of the Positivist calendar, which begins with the French Revolution. Among the decorations are the “flags of the five nations”—Brazil, China, Turkey, Chile and Haiti! Only two South American countries are represented because “these are unfortunately the only ones in which the Positivist faith as yet counts fervid adepts.” China wins place as the “most vast nation of the Orient;” Turkey as the “most cultured people of the East” (!), and Haiti is admitted “in honor of the greatest of negroes, Toussaint L’Ouverture,” whose portrait is the only non-Caucasian face among the many about the walls. There are of men of all ages and nations, whom the Positivists consider of world importance,—Camões, Lavoisier, Cervantes, St. Gall, Cromwell, and many others, the only American among them being an atrocious chromo print of Washington. Higher still, in decorative letters and the simplified spelling of Positivist Portuguese, are scattered the words,—Space, Industry, Architecture, Painting, Earth, Music, Poetry, Politics, Proletariat, Priesthood, Monotheism, Astrology, Family, Humanity, Patriotism, Fetishism, Polytheism, Woman, Morality, Sociology, Biology, Soil, Chemistry, Physics, Astronomy, Logic. Above what, for want of a better name, might be called the altar or the main chapel, runs the inscription:
“Vergine Madre Amen te plus quam me nec me nisi propter te.”
No Catholic church was ever more crowded with images than the “Temple of Humanity.” In fact, the more closely one looked the more did certain forms and beliefs of Catholicism peer through the outward modern mantle of Positivism, as if either the founder or his disciples had not been able to divest themselves entirely of their inherited faith. The most Catholic beata in South America could scarcely have shown greater reverence for the sacred pictures, graven images, and “relics of the faith” with which the temple was crowded. Above the “pulpit” was a bust of Comte on a column, its upper portion covered with green cloth embroidered with white silk “by one of our young female proselytes.” Portraits of Comte and his mistress, Clothilde de Vaux—both painted in China and depicting them with almond eyes—hung in the main chapel, where there were also paintings of each of them on the death bed. Pictures of the Bastille, of Dante and Beatrice, of the Sistine Madonna surmounted by a cross, “because she was an ardent Catholic,” were among the many which a roving eye gradually discovered. Most astonishing of all was the likeness of “Humanity,” a virgin figure with the features of Clothilde de Vaux, dressed as a bride, with a green band at her waist and holding in her arms a pretty boy who grasped a handful of daisies and pansies, the Positivist flowers, and gazed up into the woman’s face, the whole patently inspired by the Catholic madonnas which it closely resembled. In the background were the Panthéon and Père Lachaise cemetery, where Comte is buried.