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Comte to his adopted daughter and her son; and, lastly, a sum of £240 a-year for the support of M. Laffitte, whose entire energies are devoted to the Positivist work. We look on the maintenance of these objects as a sacred duty involved in any practical acceptance of Positivist belief.

The second fund is that for the general purposes of the London Committee, for the rent and incidental expenses of the Hall where lectures are given, and for printing, and advertising for the lectures and meetings.

The third fund is for the publication of works of Comte, and other Positivist writings. The whole of the profits arising from any publication of the Committee go to the publishing fund for the extension of the movement.

The Revue Occidentale, the organ of Positivism, edited under the direction of M. Pierre Laffitte, appears every two months in Paris.

In concluding this Report, we desire to say that, whilst we disclaim any pretension to direct our fellow-Positivists, we shall always be ready at any time to give any explanations or suggestions that may be asked of us, to supply any information about our action or system, and to put any one who desires it in communication with the central Direction.

1 January, 1886.

1 Moses, 98

FREDERIC HARRISON (President).
J. H. BRIDGES.

E. S. BEESLY.

J. COTTER MORISON.

VERNON LUSHINGTON.

ALFRED COCK.

B. FOSSETT LOCK (Secretary).

NEWTON HALL,

Fleur-de-lis Court, Fetter Lane, E. C.

XVII

VALEDICTORY

1902

TWENTY-ONE YEARS AT NEWTON HALL

Valedictory Address given March 2, 1902

THE meeting of to-night will be the last public gathering that our Society will hold in this Hall, before removing to its new seat, No. 10 Clifford's Inn; and it will be useful to pass in review the various attempts which have been made to develop the principles of Positivism during the twenty-one years of our tenancy here. We are compelled to leave a place which has many associations for us, by the fact that the ground landlords, the Royal Scottish Corporation, require for their own purposes the fine old eighteenth century Hall which we restored and adorned in 1881; and we have secured an equally suitable lodging in the historic buildings of Clifford's Inn, hard by, once a famous Inn of Chancery, which dates back to the fourteenth century of Old London.

This Hall was opened on May 1, 1881, by Pierre Laffitte, the successor of Auguste Comte and Director of Positivism, who came over for the purpose from Paris, and gave in French three addresses on successive Sundays on the Religion of Humanity, and two more on the rise of Sociology and Moral Science, which were heard by large audiences of our own friends, as well as of the public. Pierre Laffitte, now in his

eightieth year, still lives in Paris, whither he came from the Garonne in 1839, and has been Director of Positivism, and in almost continued activity, since the death of Comte, in 1857, for nearly forty-five years. Two of the discourses that he gave were, on the occasion, one on the Presentation of infants, and another on the Admission of an adult member of our body - ceremonies that Comte proposed, without any mystical character or objective efficacy, to correspond the first with the Baptism of infants, on being "presented" as new members of the community, and dedicated publicly to its service, the second, answering to our "coming of age,' or entrance on adult responsibility as full members of the common life.

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The regular Sunday addresses were begun on May 22, after the return home of M. Laffitte, when I spoke of the nature of our movement, of the debt we owed to our Director in France, and the importance of the Occidental character of the Positivist synthesis. We may rest assured that any spiritual or moral movement whatever which limits itself to national bounds has no vitality or elevation in it. The thought, the science, the moral standards of our age are not national, but Western, that is, common to the advanced nations of the West, which for these purposes form one nation. Political, economic, and practical relations are local and national, limited by language, race, institutions, and political divisions. But all the intellectual and spiritual relations of modern civilisation are common to the advanced communities of Europe and America. Hence, a national or local note is fatal to the claims of any high spiritual movement, as we see in the typical example of Protestant and sectarian religion. The great inspiration of the Religion of Humanity is that it keeps ever in view that universal human ideal, whilst the various local types, habits, and ideas, all healthy in them

selves, tend to correct and supplement each other. The Gospel only became a world-wide power when it ceased to be Jewish and was preached to the Gentiles throughout the Roman world. The religion of the Middle Ages was Catholic, i.e., at least in principle, universal. All that was elevated in the New Birth of thought and life in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, all that was humane in the Revolutions of the eighteenth century, was offered to the whole human race, even whilst it had a local or national origin. If Humanity is ever to become the venerated centre of our thoughts and acts, it must be presented to us as a power in which national and local varieties are absorbed and transfigured.

I have spoken of the Positivist movement as a synthesis. Both the word and the idea must be made familiar and typical, since this movement consists of several different purposes, of which all must be combined in a common harmony; for its special characteristic is the right co-ordination of heterogeneous forces and activities. These essentials are:

I. An intellectual basis, a body of principles, solidly taught and grouped together, a mass of real scientific knowledge; 2. A system of moral education — a personal training in feeling and in duties, a direct appeal to the nobler emotions; 3. A practical scheme of society and politics, leading to a new future for the commonwealth of nations.

Positivism means, therefore, (a) an education in scientific truth, (b) a moral discipline in conduct and in worship, and (c) a political programme or movement. It is impossible to limit it to any one, or any two, of these. All are characteristic and essential. And the efficacy of any one side depends on its being stimulated, regulated, and harmonised with the other two.

For these reasons, Positivism cannot be compared with any of the current types of religion, or of social organisation,

or of scientific education. How compare with Christianity, either Catholic or Protestant, a religious movement which is just as earnest about the international relations of States, and also about the true classification of the sciences, as it is about any creed or any worship, to say nothing of its fixing the idea of religion on that which belongs to Man, to Demonstration, and to this Earth on which we live? How compare with any of the philosophies, metaphysical, or materialist, a movement which is far more keen to study the progress towards culture and comfort for the working-classes, than it is keen about the origin of species or the geometry of four dimensions? And yet again, how compare with any of the socialisms or social utopias of this age a Socialism (as, in one sense, Positivism undoubtedly is) which seeks to base the Future on a scientific study of the Past, which looks to the moralisation of Capital, not its communalisation, by means of a common religion, and the organised influence of a body of moral and intellectual leaders?

How is it possible to compare Positivism with any theological religion, with any known philosophy, with any modern Socialism? Yet it is a Religion, it is a Philosophy, it is a Socialism. None of the three can be dispensed with, or forgotten, or even adjourned. All are alike important: all must be co-ordinated. For Positivism is an effort to bring about the synthesis, i.e. the harmonious and organic ordering of modern civilisation as a whole to a common result. Its mission is to raise to one common plan the reorganisation of the intellectual world and its systematic education, the purification of man's moral life, the re-settlement of society on just and happy terms. That plan in brief is the inspiration of all human activities be they of science, of morality, of society by the sense of man's duty to Humanity, man's understanding of Humanity and the world in which he finds.

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