COMTE AND SPENCER ON SOCIOLOGY. 65 



manist or a philanthropist in education hoth with sincerity and with 

 reason. There is a seed of truth in each half of these contrasts, and 

 it is more than prohahle that, despite all attempts at adjustment, men 

 will be born humanists and philanthropists to the end of time.* 



COMTE AND SPENCER ON SOCIOLOGY.f 



By LEON METCHNIKOFF. 



THE most momentous intellectual conquest of our days is, perhaps, 

 the discovery of the great law of the unity and continuity of 

 life, generally styled the law of evolution. Not only are the remotest 

 branches of knowledge — as, e. g., physics and psychology, or chemis- 

 try and politics — connected by it into a systematic and harmonious 

 whole ; but by it also has been realized that union between science 

 and philosophy for which the clearest minds of former ages longed in 

 vain. The secular feud between idealists and materialists ceases on 

 the solid ground of the evolutionary doctrine, where every science 

 becomes philosophical without surrendering to any metaphysical or 

 a priori conception ; while, on the other hand, our psychological and 

 ethical inquiries acquire a firm basis and scientific precision and accu- 

 racy as soon as they are touched by the vivifying spirit of this theory. 

 Since we admit the unity of life, and since we consider cosmic 

 phenomena, in spite of their amazing apparent diversity, only as vari- 

 ous manifestations or consecutive degrees of one evolution, we are 

 compelled to infer that our methods of political or historical knowl- 

 edge ought to be essentially identical with those generally prevailing 

 in physical or biological researches. Metaphysical speculations on so- 

 cial matters, in which the greatest philosophers of former centuries de- 

 lighted, lose their hold upon the skeptical mind of our age, and even 

 the economic empiricism of Adam Smith, Malthus, and Ricardo, grows 

 inadequate to the modern demand for positive knowledge of the natu- 

 ral laws pervading the evolution of human societies. Sociology, i. e., 

 a strictly scientific statement of these kvws, is considered nowadays as 

 an integral part, as the necessary " couronnement de P edifice " of a 

 methodical conception of the world. The very name of sociology 

 has been created ad hoc by Comte, who esteemed himself to be the 



* In closing the more distinctly historical portions of these articles, I desire again to 

 express my indebtedness to the foreign histories of education. From such a work as 

 Schmidt's " Geschichte " I have made selection and condensation as seemed best to serve 

 my purpose. 



It will be understood that for all criticisms and opinions, e. g., on English deism, on 

 classical study, I am alone responsible. 



f From an article entitled " Revolution and Evolution," in the " Contemporary Re- 

 view " for September, 1886. 

 vol. xxx. — 5 



