Lareveillere Lepaux, a member of the French Directory, invented a new religion of Theo-philanthropy which seems in fact to have been an organized Rousseauism. He wished to impose it on France but finding that in spite of his passionate endeavours he made but little progress he sought the advice of Talleyrand. "I am not surprised" said Talleyrand "at the difficulty you experience. It is no easy matter to introduce a new religion. But I will tell you what I recommend you to do. I recommend you to be crucified and to rise again on the third day." We cannot say whether Lareveillere made any proselytes but if he did their number cannot have been much smaller than the reputed number of the religious disciples of Comte. As a philosophy, Comtism has found its place and exercised its share of influence among the philosophies of the time but as a religious system it appears to make little way. It is the invention of a man not the spontaneous expression of the beliefs and feelings of mankind. Any one with a tolerably lively imagination might produce a rival system with as little practical effect. Roman Catholicism was at all events a growth not an invention. Cosmic Emotion, though it does not affect to be an organized system, is the somewhat sudden creation of individual minds set at work apparently by the exigencies of a particular situation and on that account suggestive _prima facie_ of misgivings similar to those suggested by the invention of Comte. Now is the worship of Humanity or Cosmic Emotion really a substitute for religion? That is the only question which we wish in these few pages to ask. We do not pretend here to inquire what is or what is not true in itself.