Les morts gouvernent les vivants is the most quoted line in positivism and the one that survives the collapse of everything around it. Comte's argument is straightforwardly sociological before it is devotional: the language you think in, the science you use, the law you live under and the streets you walk were all made by people you cannot consult, and the living are a thin layer operating inside their decisions. From this he derives both the worship and the ethics, since a being that receives everything and originated almost nothing has no standing to organise its life around itself. The proposition is close enough to ancestor veneration that this page tags it as such, and Comte would not have objected.