13-i REASONS FOR DISSENTING FKOM COMTE. 



this incidental agreement, however, the contents of Social 

 Statics are so wholly antagonistic to the philosophy of 

 M. Comte, that, but for the title, the work would never, 

 I think, have raised the remembrance of him unless, indeed, 

 by the association of opposites.* 



And now let me point out that which really has exercised 

 a profound influence over my course of thought. The truth 

 which Harvey s embryological inquiries first dimly indicated, 

 which was afterwards more clearly perceived by &quot;Wolft^ and 

 which was put into a definite shape by Yon Baer the truth 

 that all organic development is a change from a state of 

 homogeneity to a state of heterogeneity this it is from 

 which very many of the conclusions which I now hold, 

 have indirectly resulted. In Social Statics, there is every 

 where manifested a dominant belief in the evolution of man 

 and of society. There is also manifested the belief that this 

 evolution is in both cases determined by the incidence of 

 conditions the actions of circumstances. And there is 

 further, in the sections above referred to, a recognition of 

 the fact that organic and social evolutions, conform to the 

 same law. Falling amid beliefs in evolutions of various 

 orders, everywhere determined by natural causes (beliefs again 

 displayed in the Theory of Population and in the Principles 

 of Psychology] ; the formula of Von Baer acted as an 

 organizing principle. The extension of it to other kinds 

 of phenomena than those of individual and social organiza- 



* Let me add that the conception developed in Social Statics, dates hack to a 

 scries of letters on the &quot; Proper Sphere of Government,&quot; published in the 

 Nonconformist newspaper, in the latter half of 1842, and republished as a 

 pamphlet in 1843. In these letters will be found, along with many crude ideas, 

 the same belief in the conformity of social phenomena to unvariable laws ; the 

 same belief in human progression as determined by such laws ; the same belief 

 in the moral modification of men as caused by social discipline ; the same 

 belief in the tendency of social arrangements &quot; of themselves to assume 

 a condition of stable equilibrium ;&quot; the same repudiation of state-control over 

 various departments of social life ; the same limitation of state-action to the 

 maintenance of equitable relations among citizens. The writing of Social Statics 

 arose from a dissatisfaction with the basis on which the doctrines set forth in those 

 letters were placed : the second half of that Avork is an elaboration of these 

 doctrines ; and the first half a statement of the principles from which they are 

 dcducible. 



