The golden rule of morality,
in M. Comte's religion, is to live for others, "vivre pour autrui." To
do as we would be done by, and to love our neighbour as ourself, are not
sufficient for him: they partake, he thinks, of the nature of personal
calculations. We should endeavour not to love ourselves at all. We shall
not succeed in it, but we should make the nearest approach to it
possible. Nothing less will satisfy him, as towards humanity, than the
sentiment which one of his favourite writers, Thomas a Kempis, addresses
to God: Amem te plus quam me, nec me nisi propter te. All education and
all moral discipline should have but one object, to make altruism (a
word of his own coming) predominate over egoism. If by this were only
meant that egoism is bound, and should be taught, always to give way to
the well-understood interests of enlarged altruism, no one who
acknowledges any morality at all would object to the proposition.
But M. Comte, taking his stand on the biological fact that organs are
strengthened by exercise and atrophied by disuse, and firmly convinced
that each of our elementary inclinations has its distinct cerebral
organ, thinks it the grand duty of life not only to strengthen the
social affections by constant habit and by referring all our actions to
them, but, as far as possible, to deaden the personal passions and
propensities by desuetude.
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