PH. -vi.] THE ATTITUDE OF PHILOSOPHY. 485 



treated in the concluding chapter of Part IT., we find* a 

 number of unadjusted cravings which natural selection can 

 but imperfectly deal with, and which it must be left for some 

 process of direct adaptation slowly to adjust. An analogous 

 though not entirely similar explanation will apply to the 

 case of Robespierre and the Terror. 



But while such pathological phenomena can by no means 

 be explained as solely due to certain anarchical theories 

 social and religious, it still remains true that between the 

 abnormal social phenomena and the anarchical theories there 

 is a very close kinship ; such that the theory finds itself 

 practically incarnated in the social event, while it is through 

 the anarchical theory that the abnormal social event finds 

 itself redeemed from the odium attaching to sheer criminal 

 malevolence, and entitled to that slight modicum of credit 

 which we are wont to accord to sincerity when allied with 

 destructive fanaticism. It is as true that the iconoclastic 

 theory naturally lends itself to the purposes of the Jacobin 

 or the Communist, as it is that the Jacobin or the Com 

 munist naturally justifies to himself his purposes by an 

 appeal to the iconoclastic theory. Hence it is undeniable 

 that when modern scientific thought, not yet having reached 

 a dynamical view of things, allied itself to the spirit of mere 

 negative protest against existing beliefs and institutions, it 

 might well have seemed to a thinker like De Maistre to be 

 irreconcilably hostile to all the habits and aspirations which 

 give to civilized life its value. 



Now the dynamical view of things, however crudely an 

 nounced by Comte in his theory of the &quot; Three Stages,&quot; 

 differed widely from the statical view of De Maistre ; for it 

 proclaimed that we must found our general conception of the 

 world and our plans for social amelioration upon a synthesis 

 of special scientific truths, established by the use of the 

 objective method, and not upon a congeries of theological 

 dogmas, established originally by the use of the subjective 



