has been fashioning creeds, beliefs, systems of instruction and education, codes of laws and manners, sciences, literatures, arts, trade and commerce, and all those human appliances which are pre-supposed when one speaks of human societies definitely formed and properly differentiated? Who is it fashioned those tender humanities which ennoble the animal in man till it becomes glorified in love, devotion, fidelity, and self-sacrifice? No one being can claim that he invented any one of these things, so indispensable to civilisation. Commerce had no one origin, neither did literature or the arts, the theoretical constructions of which last form the sciences. No one man made laws, established families, or invented language. These things were done by laborious generations of men. Government supposes concert for some attainable practical good. Can we look anywhere and not find a great human organism (not unlike the individual organism in many ways) at work, moulding and shaping things and men for higher and better uses? Is there no stream of tendency in human history working towards definite ends, gathering power and intensity as it moves along? Or, to recur to Humanity, has she no organs, like the individual has, and can she not function in the same way, by loving, thinking, acting? Is she not so functioning constantly by women, priests, or philosophers, and proletaries, or those who work for their bread? Or, if this should seem fanciful to you, although it is reality to us, has not Humanity had her types, her great exemplars in the past-and the present is, as we know, but an outcome of that past-and do you imagine that these were unconscious of their high destiny to minister to others and improve them? Did they live for themselves, think you, for "low ambitions" and egoistic gratifications? Doubtless, alloy was with their gold, as with ours, they were men-superior as they were of like passions with ourselves. But, if they lived for egoistic purposes, they lived in vain; for they got little of what this world values so highly-success, ease, and prosperity. If they sought such things, they never found them. cannot think of Milton, or Dante, or Homer, or St. Paul, or Columbus, or Descartes, not to name a host of others, as men who sought for popularity and renown. They could have obtained such things had they cared for them; millions of humble unknown men have obtained them, and passed away like ephemera. They had "their good things;". but

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these, "of whom the world was not worthy," they led chequered careers; their lives were saddened by human suffering and ennobled by human endeavour, and in their melodies the minor chord prevails.

"The still sad music of Humanity,

Nor harsh, nor grating, though of ample power
To chasten and subdue."

Can you not imagine to yourselves these men as organs of Humanity? Their function is obviously to serve mankind. Were they unaware of it? Not so! Constantl; the burthen of their song, or plaint, is that they had a mission to fulfil, a duty to discharge; and, this done, they had done with the world, unless the world had other uses for them.

Further. Humanity is not made up alone of her eminent servants. With her we incorporate the millions of unknown servants who laboured for her weal-all unselfish souls, of whatever age or clime, who, in their own lives, exemplified uprightness, honesty, disinterestedness, and love. The world is not only bettered by the illustrious known, but by the illustrious unknown who have lived. Perhaps the services of the one are as worthy of commemoration as those of the other.

Is it difficult to conceive of the being, Humanity? Pascal did not find it so. As early as two centuries ago Pascal spoke of the human race as one man who always exists and always learns: intimations of the great truth, which Comte subsequently set forth and elaborated, came to him. Upon us the fuller revelation has dawned, and the being we should serve stands now revealed in all her tenderness and majesty.

The advantage we derive from the dogma of Humanity is that it gives us a standpoint from which we can survey all human knowledge and speculation, and appraise them at their true worth. Without it we could have no test. All knowledge might be equally valuable for aught we could tell, and all speculation equally fruitful of results. We should decline to the absolute point of view, had we no standard of worth.

The dogma of Humanity unifies our conceptions, and gives us the only unity attainable. Without it, what other centre have we? From Humanity, as from the Sun, all light radiates; and our separate sparks of light should seek their source again. For of her are all things, and without

C

her was nothing made that is made. Humanity is, if we rightly understand her, a real being, which theological beings never were. And yet what has not man centred around these figments of the imagination? He has adorned them with the treasures of art, the untold wealth of human affections, and hallowed them with awe, reverence, and worship for ages. This cannot only be said of the God of Monotheism, but of the Gods of Polytheism; and it need hardly be said that there is no more reason for believing in the one than in the others. To the eye of the scientist, Jehovah, Zeus, Jove, Indra, and Osiris are all creatures of the fancy; and, as such, are to be classed with Homer's Hector or Achilles, Goethe's Mephistopheles, and Milton's Satan.

It has been urged, as an objection to Positivism, that Humanity is an abstract idea, and that human beings cannot worship an abstraction, or centre their affections in it. In reply to this, it may be said that the God of Monotheism was-save where he was identified with Christ -a pure abstraction, who had been made a personal being, so that man's thoughts and worship might be fixed upon him. Humanity is an abstraction, made up of innumerable concretes. God is an abstraction, made up of-what? The difference between the two is the difference between reality and make-believe. You can, to use Mr. Lewes's apt image, re-immerse the abstraction into the concretes out of which it was formed in the one case; but in the other case you cannot do so. Catholicism saw this difficulty, and remedied it effectually by her hagiology, Christ being in no sense a representative of Humanity on her various sides-intellectual, moral, or affective.

"In the midst of this growing divergence," says Comte, "the dogma of Humanity gives unity to our conceptionsthe only unity that can be given, the only bond that we really need. To form a right conception of the nature and formation of this unity, you must distinguish three kinds of laws: physical, intellectual, and moral. The first by their nature belong to the sex adapted for action; the last to the sex in which affection is predominant. The intermediate laws are the peculiar province of the priesthood. Its task is to reduce to a system the joint action of the two sexes, and so it shares the life of both. The priesthood is both active and affective, though not so active as practical men, not so affective as women. Hence it is that the physical

and moral laws have always been cultivated empirically. The physical and moral wants of men must be met.

But

the success attained was widely different in the two cases. Physical laws are, in reality, independent of moral laws. Within the province, then, of physical laws men could arrive at isolated convictions, which, though incoherent, were firm. On the contrary, as moral laws cannot be indcpendent of physical laws, women, in this their peculiar province, could construct no system of real stability. Their efforts were only valuable for their influence on the affections. Naturally, then, it was within the sphere of physical laws that sound theoretical cultivation originated; and it was attainable by keeping clear of the details of action. As, however, moral laws are the ultimate object of all sound meditation, a logical and scientific unity was unattainable, unless some adequate connection of physics and morals could be found. The intermediate domain, naturally connected with each of the two, offers the only bond of connection. So, ultimately, the construction of a true theoretic unity depends on a sufficient elaboration of the peculiar laws of man's understanding."