Sociology of Comte. 475 



If, then, we turn aside from Comte's method, and, taking a 

 truer method, begin by analysing his ideal, we shall get more from 

 Comte than if we followed his method throughout. This is not the 

 place to examine the ground and test of practical idealism. It is 

 enough now to characterise Comte's ideal as he found it. Despite our 

 natural expectations, we find that Comte was a humanist in ethics. He 

 disapproved of asceticism. He hated war; he regarded suicides and 

 duellists as the most degraded of criminals; he disliked capital 

 punishment, though he admitted it necessary in some cases; he was 

 acutely conscious of the necessity of definite and deliberate moral 

 self-culture; he had a just conception of prayer; he believed in a 

 system of education which should develop the feelings as well as the 

 intellect and the active powers; he regarded domestic happiness as 

 the greatest happiness in existence, and therefore desired that all 

 should own the houses in which they lived, and he knew the inestim- 

 able worth of womanhood, and especially motherhood. His concep- 

 tion of ideal character was broad and deep; in his conception of 

 education he neglected no part of the mind, and he provided for its 

 elaborate cultivation by religious ordinances. An apostle of the 

 gospel of humanity, he was aware that the cult of the familyi and of 

 the State must precede that of mankind. Each cla.ss was to be 

 systematically ennobled, and the good qualities which a true optimism 

 detects in all men are to be drawn out; it is hatred, and not love, 

 that is blind. (Cat. 292.) There is to be a peremptory demand for 

 character in public men ; but all the functions of life are to^ be re- 

 garded as holy orders. Finally, all are to have the salaries which 

 are requisite for the proper performance of their work, and no class 

 is to own any more personal view of the question. The rich need 

 not pity the poor, for the poor will not envy the rich. 



But such an ideal is not to be attained by the methods which 

 Comte suggests. The mechanical views to which he was doomed by 

 his deliberate neglect of the mind stand between him ajid the 

 realisation of his ideal. Instead of plastic methods which may suit 

 all natures, we are tO' have a universal system of education. We are 

 to march to our goal by severely direct routes. For instance, in 

 order to secure general ideas, our priests are to be omniscient, that is, 

 superficially omniscient; for human omniscience is necessarily super- 

 ficial. In the same way we are to have absolutism in politics and 

 religion, instead of attempting to draw governing principles out of 

 the minds of our citizens. We are tO' have distinctions between 

 ranks, which are veryi nearly absolute, and have nothing of the fine 

 gradations observable in actual ranks ; only bankers are to be allowed 

 to rule, and we are to content ourselves with the narrow synthesis of 

 the municipality in politics, while, if we need an objective God to 

 worship, we may toy with illusions, fancying Nature animated, and 

 attempting to trick ourselves into adoring space, as the ground of 

 existence demanding of men the same devotion as individuals pay 

 to the ground of their fatherland (Synthese subjective) ; but we mav 

 as well remember that there is no God except an abstraction of 

 Humanity, and no background to phenomena except a blank. 



HH 2 



