_sexe aimant_, represent the best attribute of humanity, that which
ought to regulate all human life, nor can Humanity possibly be
symbolized in any form but that of a woman. The objects of private
adoration are the mother, the wife, and the daughter, representing
severally the past, the present, and the future, and calling into active
exercise the three social sentiments, veneration, attachment, and
kindness. We are to regard them, whether dead or alive, as our guardian
angels, "les vrais anges gardiens." If the last two have never existed,
or if, in the particular case, any of the three types is too faulty for
the office assigned to it, their place may be supplied by some other
type of womanly excellence, even by one merely historical. Be the object
living or dead, the adoration (as we understand it) is to be addressed
only to the idea. The prayer consists of two parts; a commemoration,
followed by an effusion. By a commemoration M. Comte means an effort of
memory and imagination, summoning up with the utmost possible vividness
the image of the object: and every artifice is exhausted to render the
image as life-like, as close to the reality, as near an approach to
actual hallucination, as is consistent with sanity. This degree of
intensity having been, as far as practicable, attained, the effusion
follows. Every person should compose his own form of prayer, which
should be repeated not mentally only, but orally, and may be added
to or varied for sufficient cause, but never arbitrarily. It may be
interspersed with passages from the best poets, when they present
themselves spontaneously, as giving a felicitous expression to the
adorer's own feeling. These observances M. Comte practised to the memory
of his Clotilde, and he enjoins them on all true believers. They are to
occupy two hours of every day, divided into three parts; at rising, in
the middle of the working hours, and in bed at night. The first, which
should be in a kneeling attitude, will commonly be the longest, and the
second the shortest. The third is to be extended as nearly as possible