COSMIC PHILOSOPHY 



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 com- 

 monwealth, that it is a state in which existence 

 would be intolerable to any one 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 class functions are far more 

 under conscious public regulation than now, in 

 which hierarchical organization with unques- 

 tioned 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 diametri- 

 cally reversed. As our whole inquiry into the 

 process of social evolution has taught us, " the 

 form of society towards which we are progress- 

 ing is one in which government will be reduced 

 to the smallest amount possible, 2ind freedom in- 

 creased to the greatest amount possible ; one 

 in which human nature will have become so 

 moulded by social discipline into fitness for the 

 social state, that it will need little external re- 



2S'^ 



