Sociology of Comte. 467 



fortvictions, revolutionar) as well as retrograde, were overthrown. 

 (^Cat. 328.) The old system was disapproved in even- detail ; the 

 new was entirely without synthesis. (Sommaire appreciation de 

 Tensemble du passe modeme. 1820, p. 46.) What humaiiity needed 

 was not, as kings thinks, to- live for ever in the old wretched hovel 

 which it built in its childhood, nor. as the jjeoples think, to live for 

 ever without shelter after leaving it (ib. 59) ; but to find a new con- 

 struction fitted to the knowledge and requirements of the present. 

 Comte's constructive impulse was. no doubt, original, and it wa.s 

 stimulated by long association with St. Simon. An end must be 

 put to our deplorable oscillations between retrogression and anarch)-. 

 Only Positivism or Science is truly progressive (Phil. IV., 172), and 

 it is its business to change revolutionar)- agitation into organic 

 activity. (Phil. VI., 766). 



There are destructive and there are constructive i>eriods. and 

 among the constructive periods there are periods of detailed con- 

 stniction and periods of synthesis and systematizatioii. We have seen 

 that Comte belongs to the constructive period which followed after 

 the great destructive ]>eriod of modern times. He .sympathised with 

 the reaction at least as much as with the revolution, and speaks of 

 Le Maistre with far more appreciation thaji of Rousseau. But in 

 the passage which we have quoted from his essay of 1820 he shews 

 that he was aware O'f the .sporadic creativeness of the i>eriod im- 

 mediately subsequent to that of the Revolution, althfmgh he was not 

 aware fjF the essential connection between the two, and, like Burke, 

 failed to see in the earlier period anything more than pure nega- 

 tivity. But his appreciation of the character of the period in which 

 his youth was cast determined the form of his own creation. He 

 felt the need of a system whic-h should correlate the different .sciences, 

 and assert the power of the architect to quell the mutiny and anarchy 

 of the masons. This need of a system, which is acknowledged even 

 by thinkers like Mr. Spencer, cannot be satisfied by such an analysis 

 as Comte attempted in the Philo-sophie. There must be a .subjective 

 synthesis declaring the attitude of man to knowledge, as well as 

 an analysis of the general nature and laws of knowledge. Comte 

 points out that language and learning are the in.strument ajid the 

 form of a real subjective synthesis (Cat. 278. 322), ajid as early as 

 1 826 he had arrived at a sense of the necessity of a new Europeaji 

 l)riesth()<:»d, which should teach as its dogma the several laws di.s- 

 closed l)y the analy.ses of science, and proclaim the ideal of humanity 

 as the guiding law of all our life and thought and the first c(>ncei)tion 

 of ideal humanity drawn out by a farther analysis of universal 

 hi.story. (Considerations sur le pouvoir spirituel, p. 214.) The 

 nece.ssity for an objective synthesis Comte never admitted. He would 

 have us know the laws of phenomena, including those of human 

 nature, but he would also have us content not even to ask of the 

 relation between knowledge . of phenomena and reality or of the 

 existence or nature of any such underlying unity as that which was 

 formerly called God. As an object of worship God is to be 

 definitely displaced by Humanity. As creator and sustainer of the 



