"[26]
Nor is it enough to have created the Grand Fetiche (so he actually
proposes to call the Earth), and to be able to include it and all
concrete existence in our adoration along with the Grand Etre. It is
necessary also to extend Positivist Fetishism to purely abstract
existence; to "animate" the laws as well as the facts of nature. It is
not sufficient to have made physics sentimental, mathematics must be
made so too. This does not at first seem easy; but M. Comte finds the
means of accomplishing it. His plan is, to make Space also an object of
adoration, under the name of the Grand Milieu, and consider it as the
representative of Fatality in general. "The final _unity_ disposes us to
cultivate sympathy by developing our gratitude to whatever serves the
Grand Etre. It must dispose us to venerate the Fatality on which reposes
the whole aggregate of our existence." We should conceive this Fatality
as having a fixed seat, and that seat must be considered to be Space,
which should be conceived as possessing feeling, but not activity or
intelligence. And in our abstract speculations we should imagine all our
conceptions as located in free Space.
Pages:
214
215
216
217
218
219
220
221
222
223
224
225
226
227
228
229
230
231
232
233
234
235
236
237
238