CH. VI.] THE ATTITUDE OF PHILOSOPHY, 489 



their type of character which can be effected only through a 

 considerable lapse of time. This is the reason why civiliza- 

 tions cannot be made, but must grow. AVe differ from the 

 ancient Angles and Saxons, not so much because we know 

 more than they knew, as because we have undergone fifteen 

 centuries more of social discipline which has perceptibly 

 modified our character, and with it our moral ideals. If 

 Comte had ever Mrmly grasped the theorem " that society is 

 to be reorganized only by the accumulated effects of habit 

 upon character," he would have held himself aloof from 

 projects which could have no meaning save on the hypothesis 

 that society can be reorganized by philosophy. He would 

 have seen that though the fruit of the tree of knowledge 

 may make us like gods, knowing good and evil, it is only the 

 tree of life which can renovate our souls and fit us for 

 Paradise. 



But now, since society grows, but is not made ; since men 

 cannot be taught a higher state of civilization, but can only 

 be bred into it ; it follows that the whole Comtean attempt 

 to construct an ideal Polity, including a new religion and 

 new social institutions, was — save as a warning for future 

 thinkers — ^just so much labour thrown away. After all his 

 profound and elaborate survey of human history, Comte 

 strangely forgot that the sum-total of beliefs and institutions 

 in the twentieth century wiU be the legitimate offspring of 

 the sum-total of beliefs and institutions in the nineteenth, 

 but can in no case be the offspring of an individual intellect, 

 even were that intellect ten times more powerful than 

 Comte's. No individual will has ever succeeded in re- 

 modelling society in conformity to a prescribed id«aL Per- 

 haps no single man, if we except the Founder of Christianity, 

 has ever made his individual character and genius count for 

 80 much in the subsequent direction of human events as 

 Julius Csesar. But Caesar never reconstructed society, and, 

 though not instructed in the Doctrine of Evolution, would 



