Sociology of Comte. 465 



But his procedure was of a kind which is still popular among 

 certain persons known to the public as Sociologists. He did not 

 attempt to analyse motives, or even concrete actions, but was content 

 with the most general expression of the law of what he called 

 Social Evolution. That law he thought sufficiently expressed by 

 his doctrine of the three stages, which one of his most prominent 

 followers declared to be to sociology what the law of gravitation is to 

 astronomy. (Lewes' " History of Philosophy." 1867. Vol. I., 

 p. 623.) But whether we regard this law as established or not, it is 

 impossible to agree with this estimate of its importance. It cannot 

 really be said that we have begun sociolog)- at all if we only know 

 that men's thoughts appear first in the theological, secondly in the 

 metaphysical and thirdly in the positive or scientific form, or that 

 men pass through an age of aggres-sion and an age of defensive 

 militarism to an age of industrialism. Such a generalisation, if true, 

 is no doubt interesting, but it has none of that immediate relation Uj 

 the facts of the concrete world which we require of a fundamental 

 law. Nor can we even agree that Comte has anything like sufficient 

 proof. He himself acknowledges that the law has not worked out 

 except in the West. The yellow races are still in the stage of poly- 

 theistic opinionatedness, and the black races in the primitive stage 

 of fetichism. It may be that the histor)- of Europe has been deter- 

 mined by the e.ssential laws of the human mind, but it is also possible 

 that it may have been determined by tendencies which are peculiar 

 to Europe, and, owing tO' his disdain of psychology', Comte has no 

 possible means of shewing which of the two alternatives is true. 



But apart from the question of the truth of the law, and apart 

 from its unhappy and sterilising combination of extreme ab.strart- 

 ness and want of generality, we shall find that Comte was seriously 

 mistaken in his radical pre-conceptions, that a fundamental enor leil 

 him into his faultv methodology, and afterwards, owing to the fact 

 that his knowledge of history was insufficient to check him. gave 

 him a distorted view of the past as well as of the present, and that 

 in consequence no use can be made of Comte's sociology except by 

 employing the splendid materials which are tO' be found among the 

 ruins of his system in the construction of a new .system. Examining 

 these materials by the help of the methodology which we have ju.si 

 sketched, we shall see that the ideal which, however he carne by it, 

 Comte undoubtedly had, was in many respects a true ideal ; we shall 

 find that, in his determination of the means for realising that ideal 

 he was again misled by his unfortunate bias, and we shall prove that 

 there is in his mind a radical inconsistencv. the detection of which 

 is in the la.st degree instructive and important. Finally, we .shall see 

 that special light is thrown bv new countries on Comte's sociology 

 and on sociolog}' in general, and that they .stand in a peculiar rela- 

 tion to the whole science. 



There are few biographies in which it is easier or more suggestive 

 to trace the effect of circumstances on character and of character 

 on opinion than that of Comte. His history does much to remo^•e 

 the repugnance excited by his style and his intellectual arrogance, 



