It is a great
advantage (though not absolutely indispensable) that this sentiment
should crystallize, as it were, round a concrete object; if possible a
really existing one, though, in all the more important cases, only
ideally present. Such an object Theism and Christianity offer to the
believer: but the condition may be fulfilled, if not in a manner
strictly equivalent, by another object. It has been said that whoever
believes in "the Infinite nature of Duty," even if he believe in nothing
else, is religious. M. Comte believes in what is meant by the infinite
nature of duty, but ho refers the obligations of duty, as well as all
sentiments of devotion, to a concrete object, at once ideal and real;
the Human Race, conceived as a continuous whole, including the past, the
present, and the future. This great collective existence, this "Grand
Etre," as he terms it, though the feelings it can excite are necessarily
very different from those which direct themselves towards an ideally
perfect Being, has, as he forcibly urges, this advantage in respect to
us, that it really needs our services, which Omnipotence cannot, in any
genuine sense of the term, be supposed to do: and M.
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