OF SOCIETY. 487 



It is interesting; to see how this earlier Tract of 44. 



Early Tract 



Comte defines already with remarkable clearness the on ' social 



Polity 



main points which his later voluminous systematic j? v ^? s s 

 works were intended to bring out, prove, and illustrate 

 in greater detail. This programme consisted in the 

 main of two parts : the theory of Society or Sociology, 

 and the new Order of Society or Polity. These two 

 parts are represented in the ' Cours de Philosophie 

 Positive' (6 vols., 1830-1842) and the ' Systeme de 

 Politique Positive ' (4 vols., 1851-1854). We now know, 

 thanks, to a large extent, to Comte's own labours, that 

 the phenomena of society must be approached from 

 three sides : from the side of biology, from the side of 

 history, and from the side of psychology. Unfortun- 

 ately Comte did not admit the last, or if he, in his 

 later work, included a psychological theory, he did so 

 without distinctly admitting it ; hence the psychological 

 foundations of his system are incomplete and unsatis- 

 factory. The two separate sciences which should have 

 contributed their share to the theoretical portion of the 

 work, psychology and ethics, did not find a place in 

 the earlier work which constructed the hierarchy of the 

 sciences, beginning with mathematics and ending with 

 sociology, which was represented as a further develop- 

 ment of biology. In dealing, in his later work, with 

 moral, as distinguished from purely intellectual pro- 

 gress, he does indeed introduce a psychological distinc- 

 tion which has become of capital importance in the 

 Positivist School. This is the recognition of a purely 

 empirical fact or observation. He points out that 

 human nature is possessed of two tendencies, of sym- 



