264 COMTE TO BENJAMIN KIDD CHAP. 



for men or societies is the fountain which he has enclosed. 

 Ethics proper will be among his data. He will renounce 

 as fraudulent and absurd the attempt to deduce ethics 

 from schemes of physical or even of biological evolution. 



Have we then learned nothing, it may be asked, from 

 the naturalistic schemes passed in review ? 



They have contradicted each other (and themselves) 

 so freely that it seems impossible to maintain they have 

 accomplished much. Nevertheless, we may notice their 

 two chief suggestions. 



First, it has been suggested that society is an 

 organism ; and Mr. Spencer, with difficulties to face 

 from the materialistic cast of his own philosophy (in its 

 spirit, if not in its letter), suggests that the universe is 

 an organism. These views will receive authoritative 

 support if we accept the idealist evolutionism. It will 

 no longer be a mere assertion, it will be part of a great 

 and subtle system of thought, if we now assert that 

 society is an organism ; that its interests are paramount 

 to those of the individual ; that in its good the individual 

 finds his own. Even the bold description of the universe 

 as an organism will be justified. The universe will be 

 revealed on deeper and fuller study as a system, not a 

 chance aggregation of disconnected parts, but a cosmos. 

 Chaos and chance will be banished to the region of bad 

 dreams. Reality will be viewed as the creation and the 

 image of thought. The relation between man and 

 nature will also be conceived as necessary or organic. 

 Everywhere will be traced such a priority of the whole 

 to the parts as organisms display to us. For the true 

 and beau-ideal organism is that which is more than an 

 organism, self-conscious reason. 



Secondly, we cannot fail to observe a suggestion of a 



