Like all religions, the new creed already tended to harden into set forms, the failure to carry out which was evidently a more grievous sin than the disobeying of the general principles of the order. Their veneration of pictures of the dead was almost medieval; the railing of the tomb of Clothilde had been brought from Paris and as much fuss was made over it as ever devout peasants did over the shin-bone of a saint; “first sacraments” were administered in the temple; “the faithful” were urged to visit the “sacred places of Positivism;” they had a substitute for crossing oneself, “a sacred formula of our faith in which it is customary for all believers to stand up out of respect for Our Master.” There was even a hint of Mohammedanism, a mark in the cement floor of the porch under the pillars indicating the direction of Paris—the thought of Paris as a sacred city was a trifle startling—“toward which all Positivistic Temples should have their principal axes.”
The sweetmeat seller announces himself with a distinctive whistle
The opening of the “Kinetophone” in Brazil
The ruins of an old plantation house on the way to Petropolis, backed by the pilgrimage church of Penha
In the basement of the temple was a printing plant from which issues a constant stream of Positivist pamphlets, books, biographies of Benjamin Constant, and similar forms of propaganda. Here, too, is the original flag of republican Brazil, painted in crude colors on pasteboard by order of Teixeira Mendes. The story of its designing is not without interest. Having been assigned the task by the leaders of the revolution, the present head of the Positivists of Brazil determined to keep the general form of the existing national banner. João VI had given the kingdom a coat-of-arms set in a golden sphere on a blue background. Mendes changed the blue to green, basic color of the Positivist banner and meant also to symbolize the tropical vegetation of the land, as the yellow sphere does the gold in its soil. Then he called in an astronomer, and taking the twenty principal stars of the southern firmament at noon of November 15, 1889, to represent the twenty states of Brazil, he placed nineteen below the equator-like band across the golden sphere, and one above it to indicate that part of the country north of the equator, or of the Amazon. The sphere was inclined on the horizon according to the latitude of Rio, the tobacco and coffee on the old royal coat-of-arms were removed, as “mere commercial things not fit for a place on the national banner,” and along the equatorial band was run a line from the Positivist motto.
The women of the congregation sat on a platform in front of the “altar” rail, the men down in the body of the “church.” Women should love Positivism, according to its disciples, for it dignifies, venerates, and raises them to their due elevation. The “3rd of Guttenberg” on which the temple was dedicated is also the “Feast of Woman” day, on which Positivists celebrate the “transformation of the cult of the Catholic Virgin into the cult of Humanity.” Teixeira Mendes, long the head of the sect in Brazil, sat in the “pulpit” beneath the bust of Comte and “preached,” if his un-sermon-like remarks uttered in a weak, thin voice barely heard through an immense white mustache may be so called. His diminutive form was covered by a dark robe, with a green cord about the neck and embroidered with the Positivist flowers. The “sermon” emphasized the Positivist conception of the “virgin mother” as combining the two great qualities of the feminine type,—purity and tenderness. Like many other religions, this modern creed clings to the legend of a virgin mother. As the gathering marched out to the tune of the “Marseillaise,” I asked my cicerone to explain the frequent recurrence of the “virgin mother” motif in temple and sermon. He replied that it was the Positivist belief that humanity would gradually be educated up to the point where “woman will be able to reproduce alone, without the necessity of ‘sin’ with man!”