Science and Citizenship 



of spiritual freedom, untrammelled by the pro- 

 hibition and compulsion which in civil history are 

 called law and politics ; in natural history, tooth 

 and claw. How far this belief in a life of spiritual 

 freedom is real, and how far it is illusory, matters 

 not for the moment. The point of insistence is 

 that the members of a religious community are 

 bound together by similarity of ideas and feelings, 

 and not by bonds which rest upon a potential 

 recourse to physical force. In other words, the 

 social influences immediately operative upon and 

 amongst a religious community are mental, moral, 

 and aesthetic. They are not legal and political. 

 And in this respect at least it is sufficiently manifest 

 that the scientific community resembles a religious 

 one. 



XXI 



It is one of the merits of Comte to have aided 

 the progress of thought by generalising under 

 the one conception of Spiritual Powers all those 

 agencies and institutions which influence men by 

 mental, moral, and aesthetic considerations. His 

 corresponding conception of Temporal Powers 

 generalises agencies and institutions which operate 

 on or influence conduct by an actual or potential 

 recourse to physical force. The Spiritual Powers 

 thus seek to substantiate or to modify belief using 

 that term in its broadest sense having as their in- 

 struments ideas and emotions. Temporal Powers 

 seek to determine conduct by using material re- 

 wards as impulse, and physical fear as deterrents. 



265 



