Introduction: rethinking Comte 5
Religion would distil guardian angels and subcults of Clotilde (`ma
sainte ange')15 and the Vierge-MeÁre. Not to mention the sacred icon of
l'Humanite itself: in the statuary of its Temples, a thirty-year-old woman
cradling a boy-child in her tender arms (xi:127).
Looking back over the period of his ®rst synthesis (1826±42) Comte
liked to think of himself as the Aristotle of Positivism. With the religious
program, announced in the second, he aspired to be its St Paul ± not
only as an evangelist for the new faith, but above all as the organiser of
its Church. Besides congregations, there were literal churches to be
built, surrounded by elaborate cemeteries, and Positivist priests to be
recruited, trained and set to work. The religion of Humanity was to have
two hundred residential presbyteries in France alone, with one priest per
6,000 inhabitants.16 Beyond that, beginning with the most advanced
societies of Western Europe, then spreading from the `white races' to the
`less advanced' regions of Asia and Africa, it was to expand into a global
organisation. Coordinated by national and regional councils, under the
overall guidance of seven `metropolitans', this would culminate in the
primacy of the sacerdoce in Paris (x:323±7). Not merely St Paul; in fact,
Comte was to be Positivism's St Peter as well, inaugurating the of®ce of
Grand-preÃtre de l'Humanite in his own august person.17