Sociology of Comte. 479 



complexity have to be faced. If new countries are free from bad 

 traditions, they also lack the sustaining power of sound traditions. 

 Such traditions grow up, no doubt, especially in a landed population, 

 but until they have grown up there is likely to be, under ordinar)- 

 circumstances, a formidable amount of genuine anarchy, and the 

 influx of new-comers is always sufficient in a new country to consti- 

 tute a perpetual class of unabsorbed aliens and tO' create an un- 

 desirable line of cleavage. Acknowledging that Comte was wrong in 

 basing his whole system of sociology on an analysis of human his- 

 tory, we cannot but agree with him in regarding continuit}- of 

 national life as a matter of vast practical importance, and acknow- 

 ledging that he was wrong in thinking that in the case of colonies 

 such continuity is necessarily broken, we see that he can only be 

 refuted by shewing that the immanent continuity may become an 

 operative continuity as a result of special efforts on the part of 

 colonists to grapple with this special difficult}-. Many Americans 

 know more of England than the English, and of Europe than the 

 Europeans, and it is a truism that the consciousness of race is 

 stronger in Englishmen in the colonies than at home. Unfortu- 

 nately, this effort at continuit}-, admirable as it is in its wavi, is not 

 often exact and strenuous enough to maintain the living essence in 

 preference to the set form of the national spirit, and therefore 

 colonies can only escape from Comte's general condemnation by a 

 determined endeavour to understand and establish the open channels 

 through which the life of the old world can flow naturally into that 

 of the new, and create a real continuity underlying whatever dif- 

 ferences of form the new circumstances may determine. Finally, 

 for the reasons we have already mentioned the labourers are neces- 

 sarily few, and the general standard of education in the upper classes 

 is lower, especially among boys, than in old countries. On those, 

 therefore, who have the power to study the sociological questions of 

 a new countr}- rests a great load of responsibility, both to their 

 country, which desires to see its way open for expansion, and to the 

 world, which is anxious to welcome an accession to the number of 

 its nations, and may hope to find in the solution of the political 

 problems of a new societ}- some remedy for the national maladies of 

 older peoples. 



