CHAP, ii COMTE S LIFE AND TEACHING 19 



or in subsequent days the military classes, who had 

 assumed command of the State, kept the priests under 

 control. Both of these systems yielded very imperfect 

 types of the State ; yet humanity owed much to them. 

 The practical wisdom of the priests, and, still more, the 

 sagacious instincts of secular statesmanship, did a great 

 deal to counteract the anti- social tendencies of a de- 

 veloped theology. Instead of dreaming away their 

 lives in religious joys, or in thoughts of another world 

 as their creeds may have demanded men were dis- 

 ciplined by their wise rulers to think of the interests 

 of their country, and to aim at the public weal. Under 

 Monotheism once more i.e. under Christianity, or, as 

 Comte calls it, " Catholicism " a very great advance was 

 made through the mediaeval separation of the spiritual 

 and temporal powers. The empire of the German 

 Caesars and the ecclesiastical Papacy stood over against 

 each other in seemingly hostile array as competitors for 

 the supreme place. Eeally, says Comte, the separation 

 of theory from practice for that is what it means from 

 his point of view was a decisive gain for human well- 

 being. During the same epoch chivalry or defensive 

 warfare formed a transition stage from the old aggres- 

 sive militarism to the modern Industrialism. So much 

 had already been wrought by the spirit of positivism, 

 even before it had come to self-consciousness. But now 

 science is fully accredited and well grown ; and in- 

 dustrialism, the definitive social order, which corresponds 

 to science or positivism, the definitive stage of thought, 

 lies all around us, albeit still in sad confusion. The long 

 regency of God is at an end. The minority of Humanity 

 has ceased. We are done with dreams of knowing the 

 causes of things ; we are content henceforth to register 

 sequences, and to calculate phenomena, for the practical 



