A General View of Positivism: Or, Summary exposition of the System of Thought and LifeComte, Auguste
Philosophy
A General View of Positivism: Or, Summary exposition of the System of Thought and Life
Comte, Auguste
Positivism
The festivals representing Order will necessarily take more abstract
and austere forms than those of Progress. It will be their object to
represent the statical relations by which the great Organism preserves
its unity, and the various aspects of its animating principle, Love.
The most universal and the most solemn of these festivals will be
the feast of Humanity, which will be held throughout the West at the
beginning of the new year, thus consecrating the only custom which
still remains in general use to relieve the prosaic dullness of modern
life. In this feast, which celebrates the most comprehensiveness of
all unions, every branch of the human race will at some future time
participate. In the same month there might be three festivals of a
secondary order, representing the minor degrees of association, the
Nation, the Province, and the Town. Giving this first month to the
direct celebration of the social tie, we might devote the first days of
the four succeeding months to the four principal domestic relations,
Connubial, Parental, Filial, and Fraternal. In the sixth month, the
honourable position of domestic service would receive its due measure
of respect.
These would be the static festivals; taken together they would form
a representation of the true theory of our individual and social
nature, together with the principles of moral duty to which that theory
gives rise. No direct mention is made of the personal instincts,
notwithstanding their preponderance, because it is the main object
of Positive worship to bring them under the control of the social
instincts. Personal virtues are by no means neglected in Positive
education; but to make them the objects of any special celebration,
would only stimulate egotistic feeling. Indirectly their value is
recognized in every part of our religious system, in the reaction which
they exercise upon our generous sympathies. Their omission, therefore,
implies no real deficiency in this ideal portraiture of human faculties
and duties. Again, no special announcement of the subordination of
Humanity to the laws of the External World is needed. The consciousness
of this external power pervades every part of the Positive system; it
controls our desires, directs our speculations, stimulates our actions.
The simple fact of the recurrence of our ceremonies at fixed periods,
determined by the Earth’s motion, is enough to remind us of our
inevitable subjection to the fatalities of the External World.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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