CHAP, ii COMTE S LIFE AND TEACHING 13 



division or a generalisation is never expounded once for 

 all ; we shall meet with it again as a subdivision in a 

 different section. This is a failing which leans to 

 virtue's side, but its scale is positively gigantic in 

 Comte. 



Along with the difference in scale, and in precision 

 of semi-political or legislative detail, there is to be 

 noted a difference, up to a certain degree, in the 

 animating spirit. Both treatises rely upon Comte's 

 hierarchy of the sciences ; both rely upon his historical 

 law of the Three Stages ; and both of them are affected 

 by his belief that the heart ought to rule the head, or 

 the intellect to be the servant of the affections. But 

 the last point certainly counts for vastly more in the 

 Polity than in the Philosophy. Between the date of the 

 two treatises the church of humanity, as represented 

 by its prophet Comte, had developed a whole system 

 of worship. Some have regarded the two stages of 

 Comte's thinking as flatly contradictory of each other. 

 It seems better to recognise that, at every stage, there 

 were diverse currents of thought or " streams of 

 tendency " mingling in Comte ; that he was perhaps 

 divided against himself, habitually inconsistent, con- 

 tinuously self-contradictory. Certainly it is hard to 

 reconcile the view that the heart is to be master of 

 the intellect, and its result, the sentimental worship 

 of Humanity, with the appeal to mere phenomenal 

 fact. Yet Comte and the Comtist elect are conscious 

 of no self-contradiction. Both demands are merged in 

 the blessed and magical word Positive. 



What is it to be Positive ? In French, the word 

 may have a special history, giving it a richer connota- 

 tion. In English it has no such distinctive position ; 

 it is merely the opposite of negative, or sometimes of 



