Posthumous Humanity

Whilst the greatest effort has been made to ensure the quality of this text, due to the historical nature of this content, in some rare cases there may be minor issues with legibility. The title of this essay will, perhaps, seem to certain persons in conflict with the philosophical opinions which I have all my life professed, as well as with the great school towards which the study of the sciences had led me even before I had heard the word of the master. Let such persons be reassured: the contradiction is but imaginary. Besides the Elements of Analytical Geometry, which his biographers omit to mention, I have accepted of Auguste Comte's writings only his Course of Positive Philosophy. And, furthermore, I have had to reject certain passages wherein were already revealed the familiar tendencies of the High-priest of Humanity - tendencies to be regretted in a work which will take rank among the chief ones of this age, and which I regard as the highest expression that philosophic thought has ever attained. This system of expurgation naturally traced my own programme, and the ideas I shall now set forth are as far removed from the dreams of mysticism as from the hallucinations of the spiritists.