By DONALD DeMARCO
Auguste Comte (1798-1857) is the “Father of Sociology.” In fact, he coined the term. His influence in his field is considerable though not necessarily beneficial to the populace to which he applied what he called “social physics.” No doubt the oddest feature of his thought, however, concerns the sexes which he believed to be utterly inimical to each other.
Comte’s penchant for separating things that should be unified is the outline of his life and legacy. His Catholic parents wanted him to grow up as a Catholic. They named him Isidore Auguste Marie Francois Xavier Comte. This litany of saints is a clear indication that they wanted their son to be placed under reliable spiritual protection. Unfortunately, in the sixth year of the French Republic, all churches were closed and the Baptism of children was not only strictly forbidden but punishable by the state.
Comte grew up with a strong sense of the structure of religion but without the nourishing sacraments that the Catholic Church could provide. This antinomy was to characterize his life and his philosophy. He was intensely religious and at the same time intensely atheistic. His God was Humanity and he created a new religion to support it. “I do not believe in God,” he exclaimed at the tender age of 14, an exclamation he would repeat incessantly.
He claimed that Christianity was flawed beyond restitution because, in worshipping God, it was inherently anti-social, ignoring the importance of society. It is difficult to understand how Comte could have missed Christ’s commandment to love one’s neighbor. Nonetheless, he believed it was his destiny to save the world from the ruinations of Christianity and give it back to Humanity. “I publicly seized the pontificate which had naturally fallen to me,” he declared. His new religion, therefore, sought to replace the “slaves of God” with the “servants of Humanity”.
Comte endured a tempestuous marriage with Caroline Massin. Over the course of seventeen years there were several separations, countless altercations, and finally a divorce. During that period Comte suffered a nervous breakdown from which he never fully recovered. He attempted suicide by jumping from a bridge. When the couple became financially handicapped, his wife offered to prostitute herself. To this, Comte, said no.
Two years after his divorce, he met Clotilde de Vaux, the wife of an embezzler who fled the country for fear of prosecution. Auguste and Clotilde became friends, though their relationship was strictly platonic. It was not a long friendship, for Madame de Vaux died of consumption about a year after their initial meeting. Comte’s idealization and virtual deification of Clotilde offers us one of the most bizarre rituals ever carried out between a man and his deceased friend. Comte set up the armchair that Clotilde used when she made her “holy Wednesday visits” to him as an altar which he regaled with flowers. Three times a day for thirteen and a half years, Comte meticulously formed pious exercises of the cult he created to his beloved friend. Kneeling before her armchair, he would evoke the image of Madame de Vaux and recite verses in her honor. He would repeat three times to her a phrase from Thomas a Kempis: “Amem te plus quam me, nec me nisi propter te!” (I love you more than myself, nay, I love myself only on account of you).
For Comte, Clotilde was the glorified image of Humanity. But she was also the paradigmatic image for all women. “In a word,” he wrote, “the new doctrine will institute the worship of Woman, publicly and privately, in a far more perfect way than has ever before been possible. It is the first permanent step towards the worship of Humanity.” No man could come close to the exalted image Comte had for women. In his System of Positive Polity, he stated that “Woman, even in her physical functions, may become independent of men…. The highest species of production would no longer be at the mercy of a capricious and unruly instinct, the proper restraint of which has hitherto been the chief stumbling-block in the way of human discipline.”
What did Comte have in mind as the normal mode for human reproduction in the future? Scholars believe it was reproduction through artificial insemination. Yet, male sperm is needed for this practice. Apart from what appears to be invincible scientific problems, Comte’s attitude toward the sexes represents an extreme case of keeping the sexes apart from each other. It also represents the philosophy of a man who is deeply divided in his own being. He is a man who has a strong sense of structure, but has no recourse for the nourishment that could be brought to that structure. He dreamed of a social order that was impossible and an ideal that was unreachable. He wanted to glorify women and denigrate men. Such a plan, however, appears doomed at the outset.
Auguste Comte offers the contemporary world an example of how a person who is divided in his own being is not likely to conceptualize the sexes in anything other than in a divided way. If we reject God, we cannot do justice to our fellow men. Men and women were made to complement and fulfill each other. The Catholic Church has Her structure and teaching. But She also has her nourishing sacraments. In Comte’s religion of Humanity there would be nine sacraments, in harmony with the number of planets in the solar system. He called the final sacrament “Incorporation,” which would be a ceremony equivalent to canonization. But his sacraments were mere accolades and therefore not truly nourishing. They did not represent the vivifying grace of a loving God. A true religion requires both an outer structure and an inner healing. There can be no sanctification with the sacraments.
(Dr. Donald DeMarco is Professor emeritus of St. Jerome’s University and an adjunct professor at Holy Apostles College. He is a regular columnist for St. Austin Review. His latest books, How to Navigate through Life and Apostles of the Culture of Life are posted on amazon.com.)
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