54 COMTE TO BENJAMIN KIDD PART i 



higher, call it duty ; call it God's will. In faithfulness 

 to one's own moral vocation, social and spiritual in 

 faithfulness to "my station and its duties," primarily 

 and literally in the kingdom of Great Britain, but, by 

 ultimate analysis, in that better kingdom which cannot 

 be moved, one is delivered from the extravagances of 

 altruism, and from the imbecilities of compromise, into 

 the very peace of God. 



Seeing that men are quite sufficiently selfish, Comte's 

 rhetoric in praise of altruism has probably done little 

 harm. As rhetoric, it is passable ; as a rough piece of 

 popular pleading, it will serve. But it is wholly lacking 

 in the scientific quality which we were promised. In 

 other words, it is destitute of exactness, or, one might 

 even say, of truth. 



