The ruler of a country steers the ship of state, but he is a pilot only metaphorically.  Whether the terms worship and prayer are used more than metaphorically by the Positivist seems hard to decide.  On the one hand, if it is felt that worship and prayer are indispensable to religion, it may be argued that in religions other than Positivism they prove not only on analysis, but in the course of history, to be, as by Positivism they are recognized to be, of purely subjective import.  On the other hard, it may be that they provide merely a means of transition from the religions of the past to the religion of the future.

Another matter of interest is the place of morality in Positivism as a religion.  According to M. Alfred Loisy in his book La Religion, morality and religion are bound up together.  They cannot exist apart from one another:  they might, he says, ’be dissociated in fact and thought, were it not that they are inseparable in the life of humanity.’  And in his view morality is summed up in the idea of duty.  He says, ’in the beginning was duty, and duty was in humanity, and duty was humanity.  Duty was at the beginning in humanity.  By it all things were made, and without it nothing was made.’  Thus, where duty is, there also is religion.  Not only, according to Loisy, has that always been so in every stage through which the evolution of religion has passed, but it will also be the case with the religion of the future.  Thus the conception of evolution which Loisy holds is the same as that entertained by Robertson Smith, the difference being that, whereas on the one view the idea of God and of communion with Him has been present from the beginning, and, much though it may have changed, it remains to the end the same thing; on the other view it is the idea of duty—­the duty which is humanity—­that was in the beginning and will continue to the end.  Both views are applications of the ‘pre-formation’ theory of evolution.

But Positivism perhaps is not necessarily tied to the ‘pre-formation’ theory.  It seems equally capable of being fitted in to the ‘dispersive’ theory, and of being regarded as an emanation or radiation proceeding direct from the human heart.  It may be so regarded, if we consider the essence of it to be found not in the concept of duty, which seems to imply the existence of some superior who imposes duties on man, but in that love of one’s fellow-man which, to be love, must be given freely, and simply because one loves.  The sense of obligation, the feeling of duty, obedience to the commandments of authority and to the prohibitions which the community both enforces and obeys, are, all of them, various expressions of the primitive feeling of taboo—­a feeling of alarm and fear.  If we confine our attention to this set of facts, we may say, with M. Loisy, ‘in the beginning was duty, and duty was in humanity’.  We may however hesitate to follow him when he goes on to say, ’by duty all things were made, and without it nothing was made’.