OF THE UNITY OF THOUGHT. 685 



ridicules some of their favourite methods of dealing with 

 social problems, such as the calculus of probabilities. 

 In sociology he recognises the historical method as that 

 most adapted to its subject, and, from the study of the 

 history of Mankind, he abstracts the general laws 

 which he thinks govern human development. 



In addition to the law of the three phases he 

 recognises, both in the ascending scale of animated 

 nature and in the progress of civilisation, the appearance 

 and growth of the social as opposed to the egoistic 

 instinct. He finds the first germs of this in the 

 differentiation of sex, in the care for offspring, and con- 

 ceives that the further progress of humanity towards the 

 positive order of society will be brought about by the en- 

 couragement, through rational methods and intellectual 

 supremacy, of what he later termed the " altruistic " or 

 social virtues. Incidentally we may note a certain 

 resemblance between Schopenhauer's and Comte's ideas 57. 



^ Point of 



of development, bearing always in mind that with the g^'^o*';^^^^^ 

 former such development is looked upon as being out ^^"®''- 

 of time, or purely logical; whereas with Comte it is 

 the actual development or evolution of humanity in the 

 course of history. 



With Schopenhauer the intellect comes in as a later 

 attribute of the unthinking Will and acts as a differ- 

 entiating, but ultimately as a reunifying, principle, 

 inasmuch as it leads to the recognition of sympathy 

 as the highest virtue. And Schopenhauer's system 

 explains, as Comte's does not, how this sympathy or 

 altruism originates. It has its origin in the fact that 

 the different individual Wills are only objectivations, 



