io6 COMTE TO BENJAMIN KIDD PART n 



significant that Mr. Stephen refuses to speak of a social 

 organism, preferring the more indefinite phrase, social 

 tissue. That points us to the individualism which lurks 

 in the background of his mind, to his impending re- 

 assertion of the cells versus the organism, to his 

 postulate of personal pleasure as an ultimate test. But 

 there is a more immediate difference from Comte, in 

 Mr. Stephen's distrust of sociology and of all forms of 

 authority. Keeping that in mind, we might almost 

 say that Mr. Stephen uses the biological analogy to 

 reach sociological but not moral truth. With Comte 

 sociology was the new ethic ; or, at the lowest, socio- 

 logy, the science of corporate action, was the necessary 

 basis of ethics as the science of individual conduct. 

 Mr. Stephen, however, speaks contemptuously of the 

 attainments of sociology. He thinks it scarcely a 

 science, and values its standpoint merely as a stepping- 

 stone to a new statement of ethics, in which the biolo- 

 gical analogy defines rather than justifies the moral law. 

 It follows that the biological appeal has not the moral or 

 quasi-moral weight which it had with Comte. Nothing 

 .takes its place. The appeal to consequences admittedly 

 breaks down. In fact there is a marked absence of 

 authority in ethics as presented by Stephen. Comte 

 says, " You are members one of another, be loyal mem- 

 bers of the social whole." Stephen says, " Social tissue 

 requires you to do so-and-so, and of course you are very 

 dependent on the social tissue ; still, you have a centre 

 of being in yourself, and there is always the possibility 

 left that it may pay you to defy society ; very rarely 

 indeed will it do so, but sometimes, no doubt, it will, 

 if you are unsocial enough, idiotic enough, bad enough." 

 Comte allots no sphere at all to the individual, while 

 Stephen, like other hedonists, gives him a sphere, but 



