194 COSMIC PHILOSOPHY. [pt. tu 



pristine savagery, like the utopia of Eousseau and his fol- 

 lowers, but it is a reversion toward a spiritual despotism, 

 such as was realized in ancient Egypt, and such as might 

 perhaps have been realized in mediaeval Europe, had not the 

 policy of the Emperors opposed a salutary check to the policy 

 of the Popes. In the chapter on the Evolution of Society, we 

 found it to be the chief characteristic distinguishing social 

 progress from the lower orders of organic evolution, that 

 individuals, regarded as units of the community, are con- 

 tinually acquiring greater and greater freedom of action, 

 consistently with the stability of the community. Now 

 Comte's ideal state of society is a state in which the units 

 of the community possess no more individual freedom than 

 the cells which make up the tissues of a vertebrate animal. 

 It is an absolute spiritual despotism, — or if not technically 

 a despotism, we may at least say of it, as Mr. Grote says of 

 Plato's imaginary commonwealth, that it is a state in which 

 existence would be intolerable to anyone not shaped upon 

 the Comtean model. Public opinion is to be controlled by 

 a priestly class of philosophers, against whose authority all 

 revolt would be as useless as the rebellion of a mediaeval 

 monarch against a papal interdict. As Mr. Spencer sums 

 it up : the Comtist " ideal of society is one in which 

 government is developed to the greatest extent, in which 

 3lass-functions are far more under conscious public regula- 

 tion than now, in which hierarchical organization with 

 unquestioned authority shall guide everything — in which 

 the individual life shall be subordinated in the greatest 

 degree to the social life." Now this cannot be unless the 

 development of society as it has hitherto proceeded is to 

 be diametrically reversed. As our whole inquiry into the 

 process of social evolution has taught us, "the form of 

 society towards which we are progressing is one in which 

 government will be reduced to the smallest amount possible 

 and freedom increased to the greatest amount possible ; on« 



