in his later writings M. Comte constructed, it is not unimportant to bear in mind the nature of the personal experience and inspiration to which he himself constantly attributed this phasis of his philosophy.  But as we shall have much more to say against, than in favour of, the conclusions to which he was in this manner conducted, it is right to declare that, from the evidence of his writings, we really believe the moral influence of Madame Clotilde de Vaux upon his character to have been of the ennobling as well as softening character which he ascribes to it.  Making allowance for the effects of his exuberant growth in self-conceit, we perceive almost as much improvement in his feelings, as deterioration in his speculations, compared with those of the Philosophie Positive.  Even the speculations are, in some secondary aspects, improved through the beneficial effect of the improved feelings; and might have been more so, if, by a rare good fortune, the object of his attachment had been qualified to exercise as improving an influence over him intellectually as morally, and if he could have been contented with something less ambitious than being the supreme moral legislator and religious pontiff of the human race.

When we say that M. Comte has erected his philosophy into a religion, the word religion must not be understood in its ordinary sense.  He made no change in the purely negative attitude which he maintained towards theology:  his religion is without a God.  In saying this, we have done enough to induce nine-tenths of all readers, at least in our own country, to avert their faces and close their ears.  To have no religion, though scandalous enough, is an idea they are partly used to:  but to have no God, and to talk of religion, is to their feelings at once an absurdity and an impiety.  Of the remaining tenth, a great proportion, perhaps, will turn away from anything which calls itself by the name of religion at all.  Between the two, it is difficult to find an audience who can be induced to listen to M. Comte without an insurmountable prejudice.  But, to be just to any opinion, it ought to be considered, not exclusively from an opponent’s point of view, but from that of the mind which propounds it.  Though conscious of being in an extremely small minority, we venture to think that a religion may exist without belief in a God, and that a religion without a God may be, even to Christians, an instructive and profitable object of contemplation.

What, in truth, are the conditions necessary to constitute a religion?  There must 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.  Moreover, there must be a sentiment connected with this creed, or capable of being invoked by it, sufficiently powerful to give it in fact, the authority over human