474 Report S.A.A. Advancement of Science. 



the hands of the patricians — that is, the wholesale merchants and 

 bankers. The latter are to be absolute rulers. The subtlety of the 

 world, the infinite difference between the natures of individuals, the 

 multiplicity which marks classes and breaks down caste, were lost 

 on Comte. A man must be one thing or the other, and every quality 

 must be palpable. Hence Comte is a great enemy of large States. 

 All the great Powers are to be broken up, so^ that the States may 

 be small enough tO' satisfy the requirements of Aristotle. Patriotism 

 much beyond the range of personal friendship is to him a negligible 

 thing, though he does not think so of the church, which, having 

 higher objects, should, he thinks, be universal. 



Twice we hope that Comte may escape from the mechanical 

 views resulting from his attempt to prevent the mind from being its 

 own explanation, but each time he relapses. First, he suggests the 

 distinction between the place of the individual in the order of per- 

 sonal values and that of his position in the order of functions; and 

 he gives an idyllic sketch of the relations between the classes. But 

 instead of developing this thought and analysing the purely mental 

 conception of moral worth which he mentions, in despite of his own 

 theories, he devotes his attention to the formal arrangemeait of 

 classes according to the mechanical law of increasing generalisa- 

 tion. Secondly, we find^a collision between the ideal and the prac- 

 tical which it seems hardly possible for Comte to overlook. On the 

 one hand, the priests are secretly hated by the patricians and coldy 

 respected by the people; the patricians must be induced to dO' their 

 duty by motives of vulgar pride and cupidity, and the people by the 

 modified system of payment by results, and grave faults on the part 

 of the priests are allowed for. On the other hand, the patricians 

 may safely be trusted with absolute material power, which they will 

 use as patrons of the poor and the oppressed, and the priests with 

 absolute spiritual power, which may easily be converted into material 

 power of the most terrific kind. (Pol. IV., 335.) Had Comte 

 noticed this, he could hardly have failed to be made aware of the 

 existence of the mind by the sense of the contrast between the 

 actual and the ideal. Instead, he leaves the difficulty of this co- 

 existence entirely unresolved. 



The whole of Comte's system as it stands is thus vitiated by his 

 perverse blindness to the fact of the existence of the human mind. 

 It is responsible for a faulty method, for a mechanical use of that 

 method which distorts the past and the present alike, and for the 

 closing of all the doors of escape from itself. It is easy to convict 

 Comte of generous inconsequences, where he leaves his narrow 

 theories and allows his natural sympathies to> operate. We have 

 already seen this in the case of his creation of a subjective syn- 

 thesis. We can see it also in his earnest belief in his own ideal 

 State. A consistent thinker, starting with his theories, would never 

 have attained to^ an ideal, and even Comte does not so' far forget 

 himself as to idealise in a scientific way, but we have seen that from 

 the first there was a double strain in him, and it is certain that, 

 however he attained it, he undoubtedly had an ideal. 



