Previous to entering on public worship, the direct worship, that is, of Humanity, I must explain the calender it requires.

To date, is to distinguish each day by the place it holds in the whole period elapsed since the beginning of the era chosen. If stated directly and simply, it would involve too large numbers, even as regards the duration of the life of the individual, much more in reference to that of the society. For dates then we must, as in abstract numeration, adopt an indirect and compound system by grouping the days, not however exceeding three orders of groups, or we necessarily get confused.

Of these periods, or groups of days, which are at once of man's institution and natural, it is the smallest which has gained unanimous acceptance by virtue of the subjective properties of the number seven. . . . Positivism explains the attributes of the week, and by doing so places on rational grounds an institution instinctively adopted. . . . But Positivism, whilst referring to the week its whole system of public worship, sanctions and regulates the combination of the week with larger periods, for otherwise the date would still require too high numbers. . . . The two conditions are met by a judicious combination of the month and the year, the two periods in common use, regard being had to their true nature; the month being subjective, the year objective.

All the relation to the moon being set aside, and the month becoming as subjective as the week, we soon come to see that it is necessary to make the month invariably four weeks exactly, which leads to the division of the year into thirteen months. The complementary day with which, on this system, each year ends, will have no weekly or monthly designation, any more than will the additional day which follows it in leap years. Their names will be derived solely from the festivals appointed for them, and in this way we secure the continuty of the Positivist calendar, all its months beginning with a Monday and ending with a Sunday.