THE ANARCHY OF MODERN POLITICS. 447 



not be reproduced in the numerous countries to which English insti- 

 tutions are sought to he applied. This " essentially loyal regime" 

 he further says, is approaching its end even in the country to which 

 it is native ; and English authorities, as I may have occasion to show 

 before I close, are not wanting who share the same opinion. The 

 polity to which the future belongs is one that will not set order against 

 progress and progress against order, but that will make equal pro- 

 vision for both, and make each contribute to the other ; so that order 

 shall facilitate progress, and progress strengthen order. This is the 

 positivist ideal. 



On this continent political parties can not be said to be consti- 

 tuted on the lines here marked out. Owing to the absence of political 

 privilege and the comparative uniformity of social conditions, we do 

 not as yet see any party, of sufficient importance to be taken into ac- 

 count, to which the term revolutionary could be applied. For the 

 same reasons we have no distinctly reactionary party. At the same 

 time, taking a wider view of things, and looking rather at the consti- 

 tution of opinion than at the structure of parties, we shall probably 

 see that the two opposite schools mentioned by Comte are sufficiently 

 well developed, and that the third or " stationary " school comprises 

 a very large section of the entire population. The forces are at work, 

 though, as the politicians say, they may not yet be "in politics." 

 All three concur in creating and continually intensifying the con- 

 fusion, skepticism, and apathy which are such marked characteristics 

 of the political thought and action of our time. What now remains 

 is to study the results of these general conditions in a little more 

 detail. 



By reason of their greater complexity,* and also on account of 

 their closer contact with the whole range of human passions, social 

 questions ought to be reserved more scrupulously than any others 

 for intelligences, necessarily few in number, that by a severe pre- 

 liminary training have been gradually pi-epared to work them out 

 to satisfactory results. That this is the normal state of things we 

 have abundant historical evidence to prove ; and when, in an epoch of 

 revolution, the situation is changed, we can only regard the case as 

 pathological ; though, possibly, as already explained, provisionally in- 

 evitable and indispensable. What, then, must have been the ravages 

 of this social malady in a time when all individuals, however inferior 

 their intelligence, however destitute of all suitable preparation, were 

 summoned indiscriminately and by the most energetic modes of appeal 

 to decide day by day, with the most deplorable levity, and without 

 guidance or check of any kind, the most fundamental questions of 

 politics ! Instead of being surprised at the alarming divergence of 



* From this point onward I shall, for the most part, be giving what at the outset I 

 proposed to give, namely, a paraphrase rather than a translation of what Comte has 

 written on this subject. (See "Philosophie Positive," first edition, vol. iv, p. 118 et seq.) 



