Of other features of Comtist philosophy it would be out of place to speak here,[48] where, indeed, that philosophy would not have been mentioned at all but for its having been transformed by its author into a religion, and that, too, an atheistical religion--the 'Religion of Humanity.' To myself, as to most people, a religion without a God is a contradiction in terms. To constitute what is almost universally understood by religion it does not suffice that there be a 'creed or conviction claiming authority over the whole of human life: a belief or set of beliefs deliberately adopted respecting human destiny and duty, to which the believer inwardly acknowledges that all his actions ought to be subordinate:' nor that there be in addition 'a sentiment connected with this creed or capable of being invoked by it, sufficiently powerful to give it, in fact, the authority over human conduct to which it lays claim in theory:' nor yet that there be, moreover, 'an ideal object, the believer's attachment and sense of duty towards which are able to control and discipline all his other sentiments and propensities, and prescribe to him a rule of life.'[49] That such an object is fully capable of gathering round it feelings sufficiently strong to enforce the most rigid rule of life, will certainly not be denied by me, privileged as I am to count among my friends more than one whose whole life is little else than a life of devotion to an object, 'the general interest of the human race,' plainly incapable of affording them in exchange that 'eternity of personal enjoyment' to which ordinary devotees look forward as their reward, and whose virtue I honour as approaching the sublime, on account of its independence of all the props and stimulants which ordinary virtue finds indispensable. But the sublimest virtue does not of itself constitute religion. For, besides the 'creed,' 'conviction,' and 'sentiment' indicated above, there is needed some suitable object of worship to which the soul may alternately bow down in humble reverence, and look up in fervent love--some being to whom its prayer, praise, and thanksgiving may be fittingly addressed. This want, recognised--as one of the few who do not recognise it admits--by nine out of every ten persons, was distinctly recognised by Comte, who, however, attempted to supply it by pointing, not to God, but to Man. His reason for this was not a conviction that there is no God. On the contrary, he habitually disclaimed, not without acrimony, dogmatic atheism; and once even condescended so far as to declare that 'the hypothesis of design has much greater verisimilitude than that of a blind mechanism.' But in the 'mature state of intelligence' at which his mind had arrived, 'conjecture founded on analogy did not seem to him a basis to rest a theory upon.' He preferred a religious theory without a basis, and therefore adopted one as destitute of support as the tortoise