1. The Presentation, The parents present the new-born child to the priest, who accepts it, or, in some rare cases, rejects it. We are not told what becomes of the new-born child that is rejected.
2. Initiation. At fourteen the boy is delivered to the priesthood, who take charge of his instruction.
3. Admission. At twenty-one the adult is admitted to the service of humanity.
4. Destination. Seven years after the young man is admitted to the special office which he is judged capable of filling.
5. Marriage. Marriage is not permitted after thirty-five in men and twenty-eight in women. Three months continence before the definitive celebration, eternal widowhood, save in some rare cases, of which the high priest alone is the judge, are enjoined.
6. Maturity. At forty-two the man is admitted to the full maturity of the service of humanity.
7. Retirement. This takes place at sixty-three.
8. Transformation. Perfection is prepared by repentance.
9. Incorporation. Burial in a garden in the midst of flowers.
Once entered into this way, M. Comte cannot stop, and he even arrives at the Utopia of a virgin mother, at first hazarded only as a bold hypothesis, but afterward proclaimed as the synthetic résumé of the whole positivist religion, in which are combined all its aspects. He was preparing a special treatise on this grand discovery when death interrupted him. A word on this conception of a virgin mother. Through the indefinite progress of positivism, the wife may one day come to conceive without ceasing to be a virgin, and so universal continence become the supreme law of the positivist religion, without in other respects abolishing the social bonds of marriage.