OF SOCIETY. 487 



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



Early Tract 



Comte defines already with remarkable clearness the '?, cial 



Polity' 



main points which his later voluminous systematic }? V ^? S S 

 works were intended to bring out, prove, and illustrate J r amme. r " 

 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 Philosophic 

 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- 



