perhaps edifying, in a poem, M. Comte would have it imprinted on the
inmost texture of every human mind in ordinary prose. If the imagination
were not taught its prescribed lesson equally with the reason, where
would be Unity? "It is important that the domain of fiction should
become as _systematic_ as that of demonstration, in order that their
mutual harmony may be conformable to their respective destinations, both
equally directed towards the continual increase of _unity_, personal and
social."[26]

Nor is it enough to have created the Grand Fétiche (so he actually
proposes to call the Earth), and to be able to include it and all
concrete existence in our adoration along with the Grand Etre. It is
necessary also to extend Positivist Fetishism to purely abstract
existence; to "animate" the laws as well as the facts of nature. It is
not sufficient to have made physics sentimental, mathematics must be
made so too. This does not at first seem easy; but M. Comte finds the
means of accomplishing it. His plan is, to make Space also an object of
adoration, under the name of the Grand Milieu, and consider it as the
representative of Fatality in general. "The final _unity_ disposes us to
cultivate sympathy by developing our gratitude to whatever serves the
Grand Etre. It must dispose us to venerate the Fatality on which reposes
the whole aggregate of our existence." We should conceive this Fatality
as having a fixed seat, and that seat must be considered to be Space,
which should be conceived as possessing feeling, but not activity or
intelligence. And in our abstract speculations we should imagine all our
conceptions as located in free Space. Our images of all sorts, down to
our geometrical diagrams, and even our ciphers and algebraic symbols,
should always be figured to ourselves as written in space, and not on
paper or any other material substance. M. Comte adds that they should be
conceived as green on a white ground.