448 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



views produced by the universal propagation during the last century 

 of this anarchical tendency, should we not rather experience a grati- 

 fied wonder at discovering that, thanks to the natural good sense and 

 intellectual moderation of men in general,* the disorder is not more 

 complete, and that, beneath the decomposition of social maxims, cer- 

 tain rallying-points for humanity may still be dimly discerned ? The 

 evil has now reached such a point that all political opinions, though 

 traceable to one or other of the sources mentioned, assume an essen- 

 tially individual character, owing to the infinite number of variations 

 produced by the intermingling of these three vicious principles. Ex- 

 cept in cases where men are earned away by their interest in some 

 common object or measure which, however, each generally plans to 

 turn to his own especial advantage it becomes more and more im- 

 possible to get even a small number of individuals to adhere to any- 

 thing like an explicit programme, or one in which vague and ambiguous 

 language has not been employed to produce an illusory appearance of 

 a really unattainable harmony of opinion. In the countries in which 

 this intellectual disintegration has been, as it were, consecrated, since 

 the commencement of the revolutionary era in the sixteenth century, 

 by the political preponderance of Protestantism, diversities of thought, 

 without being less intense, have been much more numerous, the popu- 

 lar mind having given itself over, in the absence of any energetic 

 spiritual authority, to the indefinite discussion of religious opinions, 

 which, of course, are at once the vaguest and the most discordant of 

 all. No country has better verified this tendency than the United 

 States of America, where Christianity is represented by some hundreds 

 of sects radically at variance with one another, and daily undergoing 

 further subdivision into shades of opinion which at last become almost 

 purely individual. The countries that were not brought to a stand by 

 the false " Halt ! " of Protestantism do not present so great a total of 

 vagaries ; and the false opinions which have taken root in them, being 

 more definite in their character, can be more hopefully dealt with. 



The inevitable result of such an intellectual epidemic has been the 

 gradual demolition of public morals. Such is the eminently complex 

 character of social questions that, even when deliberate sophistry is 

 absent, either side can be defended by extremely plausible arguments ; 

 seeing that there is no institution whatever, no matter how really in- 

 dispensable to society, that has not many and serious drawbacks; while, 

 on the other hand, the most extravagant Utopia always presents some 

 undeniable advantages. We must not, therefore, be surprised if we see 

 nearly all the great principles of public morality undergoing attack ; 



* This touch is very characteristic of Comtc. He was no flatterer of "the people," 

 and yet in the people he saw a reservoir of all the forces and all the virtues needful for 

 the happiest regulation of the social state. The greatest philosopher, the mightiest 

 leader of men, was in his view simply an organ of society, drawing all his strength and 

 efficiency from the general life of society. 



