The founder of the Religion of Humanity had a tragic and troublous career. Genius and madness have rarely been so harmoniously combined for the creation of something that should be durable and of real value. For one cannot doubt the madness of Auguste Comte. It was manifested in public on the 12th of April, 1826, and interrupted the success of his lectures, which had attracted all the leading minds of the time, including Humboldt himself. After a violent attack of mania, the founder of the philosophy of Positivism took refuge at Montmorency. From there he was with difficulty brought back to Paris and placed under the care of the celebrated alienist, Esquirol. He was released when only partially cured, and at the instigation of his mother consented to go through a religious marriage ceremony with Madame Comte, after which he signed the official register Brutus Bonaparte Comte! The following year he threw himself into the Seine, but was miraculously saved, and, gradually recovering his strength, he recommenced his courses of lectures, which aroused the greatest interest both in France and abroad.
The Positivist leader had always shown signs of morbid megalomania. His early works are sufficient to prove that he was the prey to an excessive form of pride, for he writes like a Messiah consciously treading the path that leads to a martyr's crown. His private troubles aggravated the malady, and the escapades of his wife, who frequently left his house to rejoin her old associates, were the cause of violent attacks of frenzy.
Later the philosopher himself was seized by an overwhelming passion for Clotilde de Vaux, a writer of pretensions who was, in reality, distinguished neither by talent nor beauty. The feeling that she inspired in him has no parallel in the annals of modern love-affairs. After some years, however, she died of consumption, and the germ of madness in Comte, which had been lying latent, again showed itself, this time in the form of a passionate religious mysticism. His dead mistress became transformed, for him, into a divinity, and he looked upon everything that she had used or touched as sacred, shutting himself up in the midst of the furniture and utensils that had surrounded her during her life-time. Three times a day he prostrated himself, and offered up fervent prayers to the spirit of Clotilde, and he often visited her grave, or sat, wrapped in meditation, in the church that she had frequented. He sought to evoke her image, and held long conversations with it, and it was under her influence that he founded a new religion based chiefly on his Positivist Catechism. In this cult, Clotilde symbolised woman and the superior humanity which shall proceed from her.
Although a profound and original thinker, Comte was like the rest in considering himself the High Priest of his own religion. He sought to make converts, and wrote to many of the reigning sovereigns, including the Tsar; and he even suggested an alliance, for the good of the nations, with the Jesuits!
But to do him justice we must admit that he led an ascetic and saint-like life, renouncing all worldly pleasures. An Englishman who saw much of him about 1851 declared that his goodness of soul surpassed even his brilliancy of intellect.
Though he had so little sympathy for the past and present religions upon whose grave he erected his own system, he himself reverted, as a matter of fact, to a sort of fetishism; and his "Humanity," with which he replaced the former "gods," manifested nearly all their defects and weaknesses.
In his Sacerdoce and Nouvelle Foi Occidentale the principal ideas are borrowed from inferior beliefs of the Asiatic races. He incorporated the arts of hygiene and medicine in his creed, and declared that medicine would reinstate the dominion of the priesthood when the Positivist clergy succeeded in fulfilling the necessary conditions.
The remarkable success of this religion is well known. Numerous sects based on Comte's doctrines were founded in all parts of the world, and his philosophy made a deep impression on the minds of thinking men, who assisted in spreading it through all branches of society. Even to-day believers in Positivism are found not only in France, but above all in North and South America. In Brazil, Comte's influence was both widespread and beneficial, and the very laws of this great Republic are based on the theories of the Positivist leader.
The value of certain of his fundamental doctrines may be questioned, equally with the ruling ideas of his religion, his Messianic rôle, and his priesthood. But there is nevertheless something sublime in the teaching that individual and social happiness depends upon the degree of affection and goodwill manifested in the human heart. This is no doubt one reason why the adherents of the Positivist Church are so often distinguished by their high morality and their spirit of self-sacrifice.
In addition to purely local sects and religions, France has always harboured a number of Swedenborgians, whose beliefs have undergone certain modifications on French soil. For instance, thaumaturgy was introduced by Captain Bernard, and healing by means of prayer by Madame de Saint-Amour. But Leboys des Guais, the acknowledged leader of the sect about 1850, reverted to the unalloyed doctrines of the founder, and thanks to Mlle. Holms and M. Humann, and their church in the Rue de Thouin, the Swedenborgian religion still flourishes in France to-day.