not a question of quid pro quo in respect to his co-operation, but of how much the circumstances of society permit to be assigned to him, consistently with the just claims of others.  To this opinion we entirely subscribe.  The rough method of settling the labourer’s share of the produce, the competition of the market, may represent a practical necessity, but certainly not a moral ideal.  Its defence is, that civilization has not hitherto been equal to organizing anything better than this first rude approach to an equitable distribution.  Rude as it is, we for the present go less wrong by leaving the thing to settle itself, than by settling it artificially in any mode which has yet been tried.  But in whatever manner that question may ultimately be decided, the true moral and social idea of Labour is in no way affected by it.  Until labourers and employers perform the work of industry in the spirit in which soldiers perform that of an army, industry will never be moralized, and military life will remain, what, in spite of the anti-social character of its direct object, it has hitherto been—­the chief school of moral co-operation.

Thus far of the general idea of M. Comte’s ethics and religion.  We must now say something of the details.  Here we approach the ludicrous side of the subject:  but we shall unfortunately have to relate other things far more really ridiculous.

There cannot be a religion without a cultus. We use this term for want of any other, for its nearest equivalent, worship, suggests a different order of ideas.  We mean by it, a set of systematic observances, intended to cultivate and maintain the religious sentiment.  Though M. Comte justly appreciates the superior efficacy of acts, in keeping up and strengthening the feeling which prompts them, over any mode whatever of mere expression, he takes pains to organize the latter also with great minuteness.  He provides an equivalent both for the private devotions, and for the public ceremonies, of other faiths.  The reader will be surprised to learn, that the former consists of prayer.  But prayer, as understood by M. Comte, does not mean asking; it is a mere outpouring of feeling; and for this view of it he claims the authority of the Christian mystics.  It is not to be addressed to the Grand Etre, to collective Humanity; though he occasionally carries metaphor so far as to style this a goddess.  The honours to collective Humanity are reserved for the public celebrations.  Private adoration is to be addressed to it in the persons of worthy individual representatives, who may be either living or dead, but must in all cases be women; for women, being the sexe aimant, represent the best attribute of humanity, that which ought to regulate all human life, nor can Humanity possibly be symbolized in any form but that of a woman.  The objects of private adoration are the mother, the wife, and the daughter, representing severally the past, the present, and the future, and