OF SOCIETY. 493 



vailing enthusiasm and gave just enough expression to 

 it not to deprive it of its mystical depth and poetic 

 colouring. "We know that this was followed by a great 

 disillusionment from which the nation has probably not 

 yet recovered. 



On the other side Comte lived, as he was well aware, 

 in an age of complete mental and social anarchy, of a dis- 

 integration of thought and of political floundering. His 

 task was that of a reformer and reorganiser. But he had 

 to contend with two prevailing errors or maladies which 

 surrounded him : the spirit of reaction on the one side and 

 of extreme radicalism on the other. He was not less pro- 

 phetic than Hegel, though much more definite and clear. 

 He was full of enthusiasm, but not gifted with that 

 persuasive eloquence without which constructive thinkers 

 in his country rarely gain a hearing. He was not an 

 orator who could charm or harangue large audiences. 

 His writings did not appeal, in the earlier stages of his 

 thought, to the emotions. In this respect his opponents, 

 on all sides, had the advantage over him. 



For in spite of the steady cultivation of the exact and 

 natural sciences which had continued all through the 

 Eevolution and the Restoration, the age in which Comte 

 lived was a literary, poetical, and rhetorical age. The 

 three schools of thought which then prevailed were 

 eloquently, though hardly methodically, represented by 

 brilliant writers and orators ; such were de Maistre and 

 de Lammenais on the side of reaction not to mention 

 great preachers like Lacordaire such were Fourier and 

 Proudhon on the side of Socialism; and, above all, 

 Victor Cousin, the eloquent exponent of spiritualism 



