We beg the reader to keep in view, that we do not attack Comte as a philosopher, but as a professed reformer. In the irremediable darkness of his political, philosophical and religious views, we often meet with isolated observations and remarks in which profound logic and judiciousness of thought rival the brilliancy of their interpretation. But then, these dazzle you like flashes of lightning on a gloomy night, to leave you, the next moment, more in the dark than ever. If condensed and repunctuated, his several works might produce, on the whole, a volume of very original aphorisms, giving a very clear and really clever definition of most of our social evils; but it would be vain to seek, either through the tedious circumlocution of the six volumes of his _Cours de Philosophie Positive_, or in that parody on {78} priesthood, in the form of a dialogue—_The Catechism of the Religion of Positivism_—any idea suggestive of even provisional remedies for such evils. His disciples suggest that the sublime doctrines of their prophet were not intended _for the vulgar_. Comparing the dogmas preached by Positivism with their practical exemplifications by its apostles, we must confess the possibility of some very achromatic doctrine being at the bottom of it. While the “high-priest” preaches that “woman must cease to be the _female_ of the man;”[153] while the theory of the positivist legislators on marriage and the family, chiefly consists in making the woman the “mere companion of man by ridding her of every maternal function;”[154] and while they are preparing against the future a substitute for that function by applying “to the _chaste_ woman” “a _latent force_,”[155] some of its lay priests openly preach polygamy, and others affirm that their doctrines are the quintessence of spiritual philosophy. In the opinion of the Romish clergy, who labor under a chronic nightmare of the devil, Comte offers his “woman of the future” to the possession of the “incubi.”[156] In the opinion of more prosaic persons, the _Divinity_ of Positivism, must henceforth be regarded as a biped broodmare. Even Littré made prudent restrictions while accepting the apostleship of this marvellous religion. This is what he wrote in 1859: “M. Comte not only thought that he found the principles, traced the outlines, and furnished the method, but that he had deduced the consequences and constructed the social and religious edifice of the future. It is in this _second_ division that we make our reservations, declaring, at the same time, that we accept as an inheritance, the whole of the first.”[157]