Editing Auguste Comte (section)

===The religion of humanity===
[[File:Templo positivista.jpg|thumb|right|Positivist temple in [[Porto Alegre]]]]
In later years, Comte developed the [[Religion of Humanity]] for positivist societies to fulfil the cohesive function once held by traditional worship. In 1849, he proposed a [[calendar reform]] called the '[[positivist calendar]]'. For close associate [[John Stuart Mill]], it was possible to distinguish between a "good Comte" (the author of the ''Course in Positive Philosophy'') and a "bad Comte" (the author of the secular-religious ''system'').<ref name="plato.stanford.edu"/> The ''system'' was unsuccessful but met with the publication of [[Charles Darwin|Darwin]]'s ''[[On the Origin of Species]]'' (1859) to influence the proliferation of various [[Secular Humanist]] organizations in the 19th century, especially through the work of secularists such as [[George Holyoake]] and [[Richard Congreve]]. Although Comte's English followers, including [[George Eliot]] and Harriet Martineau, for the most part rejected the full gloomy panoply of his system, they liked the idea of a religion of humanity and his injunction to "vivre pour autrui" ("live for others"), from which comes the word "[[altruism]]".<ref>"Comte's secular religion is no vague effusion of humanistic piety, but a complete system of belief and ritual, with liturgy and sacraments, priesthood and pontiff, all organized around the public veneration of Humanity, the ''Nouveau Grand-Être Suprême'' (New Supreme Great Being), later to be supplemented in a positivist trinity by the ''Grand Fétish'' (the Earth) and the ''Grand Milieu'' (Destiny)" According to Davies (p. 28-29), Comte's austere and "slightly dispiriting" philosophy of humanity viewed as alone in an indifferent universe (which can only be explained by "positive" science) and with nowhere to turn but to each other, was even more influential in Victorian England than the theories of Charles Darwin or Karl Marx.</ref>