Book contents
- Frontmatter
- PREFATORY NOTE TO THIRD EDITTON
- Contents
- PREFACE
- POSITIVIST LIBRARY
- HINT TO THE READER
- INTRODUCTION
- First Part EXPLANATION OF THE WORSHIP
- Second Part EXPLANATION OF THE DOCTRINE
- CONVERSATION VI The Doctrine as a Whole
- CONVERSATION VII The External Order, first Inorganic, then Vital
- CONVERSATION VIII The Human Order, first Social, then Moral
- Third Part EXPLANATION OF THE REGIME, OR SYSTEM OF LIFE
- CONCLUSION: GENERAL HISTORY OF RELIGION
- TABLES
CONVERSATION VI - The Doctrine as a Whole
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 October 2010
- Frontmatter
- PREFATORY NOTE TO THIRD EDITTON
- Contents
- PREFACE
- POSITIVIST LIBRARY
- HINT TO THE READER
- INTRODUCTION
- First Part EXPLANATION OF THE WORSHIP
- Second Part EXPLANATION OF THE DOCTRINE
- CONVERSATION VI The Doctrine as a Whole
- CONVERSATION VII The External Order, first Inorganic, then Vital
- CONVERSATION VIII The Human Order, first Social, then Moral
- Third Part EXPLANATION OF THE REGIME, OR SYSTEM OF LIFE
- CONCLUSION: GENERAL HISTORY OF RELIGION
- TABLES
Summary
The Woman.—In our second conversation, my father, you made me know Humanity. In the three following conversations, you have taught me the worship we owe Her. I ask you now to set before me the systematic co-ordination of the whole system of Positive doctrine around such an unity.
The Priest.—You should, to that end, renounce first of all, my daughter, all aspirations after an absolute, external, in one word, an objective unity; which will be easier for you than for our professors. Such a wish, compatible with the inquiry into causes, is in contradiction with the study of laws, meaning by laws constant relations traced in the midst of immense variety. These admit only a purely relative, human, in one word, a subjective unity. In fact, laws are of necessity plural, by virtue of the impossibility that notoriously exists of ever reducing under the other either of the two general elements of all our real conceptions, the world and man. Even if we succeeded in condensing each of these two great studies around one single law of nature, as the two must remain separate, scientific unity would still be unattainable. Though the knowledge of the world presupposes man, the world could exist without man, as is perhaps the case with many stars that are not habitable. So again, man is dependent on the world, but he is not a consequence of it.
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- Information
- The Catechism of Positive ReligionOr Summary Exposition of the Universal Religion in Thirteen Systematic Conversations between a Woman and a Priest of Humanity, pp. 113 - 140Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2009First published in: 1891