By the turn of the nineteenth century in Western Europe and America, the traditional ontological and epistemological verities on which so many people, regardless of their occupation and level of educational attainment, relied were under attack from bourgeoning fields of intellectual endeavor as diverse as biblical criticism and Modernist Christianity to physics and evolutionary biology. There were many intellectual and religious or quasi-religious movements that arose to fill in epistemological and emotional or moral gaps that were deemed to exist. Two of these movements were eugenics and Comtean Positivism, with its science of sociology. This dissertation argues that both movements sought to enhance the moral qualities of people for the betterment of current and future society, and each saw a pitfall of modernity as being its insistence on selfish individualism and personal misguided charity. Both eugenics and Comtean Positivism were types of scientific religions concocted to address similar issues and achieve similar goals. The idea of a Religion of the Future was manifested in Comtism and eugenics, and there was also a perceived affinity between Comtism, sociology, and eugenics. This affinity can be easily ascertained by reading various contributions to The Positivist Review, The Sociological Review, and The Eugenics Review. Many sociologists were also eugenicists and vice versa, and there was a religious aspect to eugenics that was expressed in Comtean Positivism. The eugenic ideas pertaining to the need to improve the mental, moral, and physical traits of people via conscious, selective breeding and education (mental, moral, physical) in order for them to live happier, healthier, and more productive lives in an increasingly complex and demanding modern society are akin to Comtean, ideas as well as Darwinian ideas.

INDEX WORDS: Comtean Positivism, Comtism, Sociology, Eugenics, Scientific Religion, Darwinism, Social Darwinism