COSMIC PHILOSOPHY 



period, comes partly around to this very point 

 of view. At the beginning of the " Politique 

 Positive," we find him announcing that the in- 

 creasing tendency in the altruistic impulses to 

 prevail over the egoistic impulses is the best 

 measure by which to judge of the progress of 

 society.^ Yet the unsteadiness with which he 

 grasped this principle is revealed by the some- 

 what misty statement, a few pages further on, 

 that " the coordination of human nature as a 

 whole depends ultimately upon the coordination 

 of intellectual conceptions." A similar fluctua- 

 tion in opinion may be noticed in Mr. Buckle; 

 and it was indeed hardly possible for the func- 

 tion of moral feeling as a factor of progress 

 to be thoroughly understood by writers unac- 

 quainted with the laws of adaptation upon which 

 the scientific interpretation of that function is 

 based. But whatever Comte's latest opinions 

 may have been, since he never formulated any 

 law to include the action of moral feeling as a 

 factor of progress, his claims to be regarded as 

 the founder of sociology must rest entirely upon 

 his theory of progress as announced and elabo- 

 rately illustrated in the " Philosophic Positive." 

 That theory, as we now see, is much too in- 

 complete to serve as the foundation for a scien- 

 tific study of history. Civilization cannot be 

 summed up in the correct formula that men's 

 1 Politique Positive y torn. i. p. i6. 



358 



