This confidence, wholly positivist, has been but poorly justified by events; yet there are compensations, and, in reality, the imperial régime, which has succeeded to the republic, differs not so much as might be supposed from that which the positivists themselves wished to establish. The principal conditions demanded by the positivist republic are: 1. Free discussion; 2. The preponderance of the central power; 3. The rigid restriction of the parliamentary or local power to the vote of the budget; 4. In fine, the investment of the growing power in the hands of proletaries or working-men.
M. Comte and M. Littré both agree on all these points; they both have an [{730}] equal horror of parliamentary government, under which, says M. Littré, power passes into the hands of lawyers, pettifoggers, and sophists. Both desire three directors; but M. Comte judges it most suitable to choose three bankers, because society is industrial, and bankers, who are the lessors of the funds of industry, are in a better position than others to know its wants. M. Littré (he was writing in The National in 1850) preferred three eminent proletaries. "What is the proletary," exclaims he, "operative or peasant, who, if he has equal intelligence, that he should not be as capable as M. Thiers or M. Guizot of directing political affairs?" He concedes, however, that as a counterpoise to the central proletarian power, the Chamber of Deputies should be composed of rich men, who are the best fitted by habit to vote the budget.
Master and disciple both agree, that Paris should elect the executive government; and that the rest of the French people should have the right to obey. Fear you that from such a system despotism must result? M. Littré reassures you, with his strange apothegm, "what is despotism in our days but government in the hands of the retrograde parties?" That is, despotism is simply power in the hands of those whose ideas are different from ours? Could he tell his secret with a more refreshing simplicity? He has another word which might excite some uneasiness. "The philosophical genius of the Convention was not inferior to its political genius, and, indeed, they were each the necessary condition of the other. Positivism is their direct heir. The whole positivist political theory, therefore, like all revolutionary theories, ends at last in this: Below, as the very condition of its existence, the sovereignty of the plebs; above, as the crown of the edifice, the dictator.
But we pass to the spiritual society. We have seen under the influence of what sentiments the positive philosophy was suddenly transformed into a religion. Madame Clotilde de Vaux had the initiative, and inspired, in 1845, the religious thought of M. Comte. From that moment it was no longer the intellect but the heart, no longer intelligence but love, that predominated in the positivist school. The disciples were transformed with the master. "I recognize and profess as the positivist philosophy requires," says M. Littré, p. 298, "that this affective side of human nature should always preponderate over the intellectual side." As soon as it was decided that religion should take the place of philosophy, M. Comte proclaimed a great Being and then a high priest. The great Being, who was none other than humanity itself, was defined to be "the collection of all beings, past, present, and to come, that freely concur in the completion of universal order," or more briefly, but not more clearly, "the continuous whole of convergent beings." [Footnote 113]
[Footnote 113: Aug. Comte, "Cours de Politique Positive," t. 1, p. 30.]
The high priest (le grand prétre) was, as we have said, M. Comte himself. After this came dogma and worship. The dogma had already its principal features in philosophy, and there was little to be added; but for worship, le culte, all was to be created. The fertile imagination of M. Comte promptly provided for it. He engaged at first in compiling and publishing a positivist catechism, by the side of which M. Littré gravely tells us "the Catholic catechism is only an embryo." He afterward constructed a calendar; he commences the new era with the year 1793, and names it Cycle of the Great Crisis. The year is divided into thirteen months of four weeks each; the months take the names of thirteen men of superior genius; instead of saying January, February, we must say Moses, Aristotle, etc. The days have also the names of celebrated men, but men of an inferior order. Several circular letters from the high priest to the faithful were dated the 4th of Moses, [{731}] 6th of the Great Crisis, or 6 Archimedes, Great Crisis 64.
There was, or rather was to have been, a college of assessor priests—the number of whom was fixed at twenty thousand for Europe, one-fourth of whom were allotted to France; positivist savans and poets were to compose the college faculty.
Time and money failed for the construction of a temple for the new worship, and the apartment occupied by M. Comte, Rue des Fosses, Monsieur-le-Prince, held temporarily its place. The faithful congregated there on appointed days, and every positivist believer was required to say three prayers daily. It was, doubtless, in consequence of one of these pious exercises that M. Littré exclaimed:
"I have too clearly perceived the efficacy of this regenerative socialism in myself and in the little group of disciples, and the calm content with which it fills the soul, not to desire to take part in it. . . . In these times, when all things seem giving way, how salutary and sweet to feel ourselves in communion with the immense existence which protects us, with that humanity which is the spirit of our globe, and the providence of successive generations!"—M. Littré, ib., p. 294.
The number of festival days was considerable; there were fourscore and one a year. The festival of the great Being, those of the sun, the dead, the police, the press, etc. Nine sacraments were instituted: