Influence
Davies argues that 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".
The system was ultimately unsuccessful but, along with Darwin's On the Origin of Species, it influenced 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 altrui" ("live for others", from which comes the word "altruism").
Read more about this topic: Religion Of Humanity
Famous quotes containing the word influence:
“You can never really live anyone else’s life, not even your child’s. The influence you exert is through your own life, and what you’ve become yourself.”
—Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962)
“A healthy soul stands united with the Just and the True, as the magnet arranges itself with the pole, so that he stands to all beholders like a transparent object betwixt them and the sun, and whoso journeys towards the sun, journeys towards that person. He is thus the medium of the highest influence to all who are not on the same level.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“No power on earth or above the bottomless pit has such influence to terrorize and make cowards of men as the liquor power. Satan could not have fallen on a more potent instrument with which to thrall the world. Alcohol is king!”
—Eliza “Mother” Stewart (1816–c. 1908)