In the fall of 2006, the Library acquired a collection of approximately 255 pamphlets published by the Positivist Church of Brazil from Benjamin Moser (’98). To date, the Library has digitized 78 pamphlets from the collection, which are now freely accessible online.
The pamphlets date from the late-19th to mid- 20th century and, with few exceptions, are written in Portuguese language by Miguel Lemos and Raimundo Teixeira Mendes, known as he Positivist apostles. As founders and leaders of the Brazilian Positivist Apostolate and Church in Rio de Janeiro, Lemos and Teixeira Mendes served, respectively, as the first Director and Vice-Director.
The collection serves as a testimony of the profound influence that positivism had in Brazil. It reveals the multiple interests and activities of the heterodox and orthodox branches of the Positivist movement in Brazil, ranging not only from immigration and women’s rights to orthographic standardization, but also the systematic approach and extent to which the Positivist Church in Brazil carried forth its plans for social reformation.
Click here to see the list of pamphlets. All pamphlets are housed in the Library’s remote storage facility to maintain optimum preservation standards and have been designated to Special Collections.
Positivism in Brazil
In the second half of the nineteenth century, French Positivism captured the interest of many Latin American intellectuals who identified in Auguste Comte’s (1798-1857) science-based philosophy the keys to social reformation in the continent. Positivism promised progress, discipline, and morality, together with the freedom from the alleged tyranny of Catholic theology, which had always dominated religious discourse in Latin America.
While positivism affected every Latin American country in the nineteenth century, its influence was nowhere as profound or widespread as in Brazil. Positivists gained immediate prestige by criticizing the Roman Catholic Church, slavery, and the monarchy as constituting major obstacles to national progress. On May 11, 1881 Miguel Lemos (1854-1917) and his brother-in-law Raimundo Teixeira Mendes (1855-1927) founded the Positivist Church of Brazil in Rio de Janeiro. The Humanity Apostles – as they became known – had both studied with Comte in Paris, and envisioned the Positivist Apostolate as an evangelizing effort in line with European Positivism.
Since its inception, the Positivist Church of Brazil preached Comte’s Religion of Humanity, whose primary mission was to complete the pact between social classes that would bring about a unified humanity, from the learned elite to the proletariat. The Church’s headquarters built in Rio de Janeiro, also known as Humanity Temple, was the first building constructed to diffuse the positivist religion in the world. The Religion of Humanity recognized as saints those historical figures that represented key phases in the social evolution of men, including Moses, Julius Caesar, Shakespeare, and Dante. Women were central to the doctrine, for Comte believed that they possessed certain innate qualities – such as affection and goodness – that would help mankind reach the Positivist stage. Women were to be venerated as the chief representatives of humanity as they were responsible for transmitting Positivist beliefs to the family.
The Positivist Church attempted to control the Positivist movement in Brazil by publishing thousands of tracts and pamphlets on wide-ranging social issues. Yet, despite its undeniable contribution, the Church attracted but a small following, and its absorption in orthodox theology alienated many unaffiliated members such as Benjamin Constant.
Positivism influenced the thinking and actions of the founders of the Brazilian republic. Several members of the military involved in the coup d’état that deposed the monarchy and proclaimed Brazil a republic in 1889 were followers of the movement. Under the influence of Miguel Lemos and Teixeira Mendes, Comte’s motto “L’amour pour principle et l’ordre pour base; le progress pour but” [Love as a principle and order as the basis; Progress as the goal”] ended up inscribed on the new Brazilian flag. Positivism’s love of science and desire for reform also affected the intellectual development of some of Brazil’s greatest writers, including Euclides da Cunha, and Lima Barreto.
Positivism began to weaken after the turn of the twentieth century. The founders of the Positivist Apostolate in Brazil became increasingly isolated in their spiritual fervor that was no longer shared by intellectuals whose interests veered more toward Darwinist evolutionism and education. Nonetheless, Comte’s emphasis on a quantitative, mathematical basis for decision-making, remains with us today. It is a foundation of the modern notion of Positivism, modern quantitative statistical analysis, and business decision-making.