We, therefore, not only hold that M. Comte was justified in the attempt
to develope his philosophy into a religion, and had realized the
essential conditions of one, but that all other religions are made
better in proportion as, in their practical result, they are brought to
coincide with that which he aimed at constructing. But, unhappily, the
next thing we are obliged to do, is to charge him with making a complete
mistake at the very outset of his operations--with fundamentally
misconceiving the proper office of a rule of life. He committed the
error which is often, but falsely, charged against the whole class of
utilitarian moralists; he required that the test of conduct should also
be the exclusive motive to it. Because the good of the human race is the
ultimate standard of right and wrong, and because moral discipline
consists in cultivating the utmost possible repugnance to all conduct
injurious to the general good, M. Comte infers that the good of others
is the only inducement on which we should allow ourselves to act; and
that we should endeavour to starve the whole of the desires which point
to our personal satisfaction, by denying them all gratification not
strictly required by physical necessities. The golden rule of morality,
in M. Comte's religion, is to live for others, "vivre pour autrui." To
do as we would be done by, and to love our neighbour as ourself, are not
sufficient for him: they partake, he thinks, of the nature of personal
calculations. We should endeavour not to love ourselves at all. We shall
not succeed in it, but we should make the nearest approach to it
possible. Nothing less will satisfy him, as towards humanity, than the
sentiment which one of his favourite writers, Thomas à Kempis, addresses
to God: Amem te plus quam me, nec me nisi propter te. All education and
all moral discipline should have but one object, to make altruism (a
word of his own coming) predominate over egoism. If by this were only
meant that egoism is bound, and should be taught, always to give way to
the well-understood interests of enlarged altruism, no one who