“Reorganiser, sans Dieu ni roi,
     Par le culte systematique de l’Humanite,”

the shattered frame of modern society.

In those days I knew my “Faust” pretty well, and, after reading this word of might, I was minded to chant the well-known stanzas of the “Geisterchor”—­

     “Weh!  Weh! 
     Die schoene welt. 
     Sie stuerzt, sie zerfaellt
     Wir tragen
     Die Truemmern ins Nichts hinueber. 
     Maechtiger
     Der Erdensoehne,
     Praechtiger,
     Baue sie wieder
     In deinem Busen baue sie auf.”

Great, however, was my perplexity, not to say disappointment, as I followed the progress of this “mighty son of earth” in his work of reconstruction.  Undoubtedly “Dieu” disappeared, but the “Nouveau Grand-Etre Supreme,” a gigantic fetish, turned out bran-new by M. Comte’s own hands, reigned in his stead.  “Roi” also was not heard of; but, in his place, I found a minutely-defined social organization, which, if it ever came into practice, would exert a despotic authority such as no sultan has rivalled, and no Puritan presbytery, in its palmiest days, could hope to excel.  While, as for the “culte systematique de l’Humanite,” I, in my blindness, could not distinguish it from sheer Popery, with M. Comte in the chair of St. Peter, and the names of most of the saints changed.  To quote “Faust” again, I found myself saying with Gretchen,—­

     “Ungefaehr sagt das der Pfarrer auch
     Nur mit ein bischen andern Worten.”

Rightly or wrongly, this was the impression which, all those years ago, the study of M. Comte’s works left on my mind, combined with the conviction, which I shall always be thankful to him for awakening in me, that the organization of society upon a new and purely scientific basis is not only practicable, but is the only political object much worth fighting for.

As I have said, that part of M. Comte’s writings which deals with the philosophy of physical science appeared to me to possess singularly little value, and to show that he had but the most superficial, and merely second-hand, knowledge of most branches of what is usually understood by science.  I do not mean by this merely to say that Comte was behind our present knowledge, or that he was unacquainted with the details of the science of his own day.  No one could justly make such defects cause of complaint in a philosophical writer of the past generation.  What struck me was his want of apprehension of the great features of science; his strange mistakes as to the merits of his scientific contemporaries; and his ludicrously erroneous notions about the part which some of the scientific doctrines current in his time were destined to play in the future.  With these impressions in my mind, no one will be surprised if I acknowledge that, for these sixteen years, it has been a periodical source of irritation to me to find M. Comte put forward as a representative of scientific thought; and to observe