The consequence is that the theological priesthood have continually sought to counteract the natural influences of their theological doctrines by making additions which were inconsistent with its "absolute" principle, but which rendered it better fitted for the purpose of binding men together. This was especially the case under Monotheism, where, as we have seen, such counteraction was most necessary. From this source arose a series of supplementary doctrines, generally tending to connect God with man, and men with each other. St. Paul, "the real founder of Christianity," took the first step in reducing Monotheism into a shape in which it could act as an "organic" doctrine, and his successors followed steadily in the same path. If the omnipotence of God raised him above all human sympathy, and tended to destroy human sympathy in his worshippers, the doctrines of the Trinity and the Incarnation again brought him near to them, and taught them to reverence a humanity which was thus raised into unity with God. In the Feast of the Eucharist all men celebrated and enjoyed their unity with this exalted and deified humanity. The same influence, in its further development, led to the adoration of the saints, and above all of the Virgin Mother, in whom Christian devotion really worshipped humanity, in its simplest and tenderest affections. Finally, if benevolent sympathies were denied to nature, St. Paul found a place for them by attributing them to grace, "which Thomas à Kempis admirably defines as the equivalent of love--_gratia sive dilectio_--divine inspiration being substituted for human impulse."[36] And the struggle between egoism and altruism was expressed in the doctrines of the Fall and Redemption of mankind.[37] Thus the social passion, which, according to the theory, could not be found in humanity, was conceived to flow from a divine influence, and became ennobled, at least as a means of salvation, in the eyes of those who would otherwise have suppressed it. At the same time, as Comte also contends, these additions or corrections of the original doctrine were inconsistent or imperfect in themselves, and inadequate to the social purpose for which they were destined; and they naturally disappeared whenever, by the emancipation of the intelligence, the immense egoism, which Monotheism consecrated in God and favoured in man, was let loose from the bonds in which the Church had confined it. Protestantism was the first indication of this change; for Protestantism is but an organized anarchy, in which the only elements of order are derived from an instinctive conservatism, clinging to the fragments of a past doctrinal system, which, in principle, has been abandoned. It contains no organic elements of its own--no positive contribution to the progressive life of humanity; it is simply the first imperfect result of that metaphysical individualism which, in its ultimate form, freed from