236 COSMIC PHILOSOPHY, [pt. n. 



were founded, but until they were sufficiently advanced to 

 supply it with the general formula of organic development, 

 from which alone the law of social progress could be deduced. 

 It was not enough that Bichat had laid the foundations for a 

 general theory of nutrition, reproduction and innervation, or 

 that James Mill had established the fundamental laws of 

 association ; though this was indeed much. The new science 

 had to wait until Von Baer had traced the order in which 

 organisms develope, until Mr. Darwin had shown how tli rough 

 heredity and natural selection organisms become adapted to 

 their environments, and until Mr. Spencer had shown how 

 associated ideas and emotions are slowly generated and modi- 

 fied in conformity to surrounding circumstances. 



All this, of course, could not be foreseen by Comte. But 

 he nevertheless clearly saw — and it does honour to his philo- 

 sophic acumen — that a comprehensive theory of social changes 

 can be obtained only by studying them in the order of their 

 historical dependence. He saw that the laws of sociology 

 are at bottom the laws of history. And especially, from the 

 practical point of view, he saw that no general theory fit to 

 serve as a basis for the amelioration of society could be de- 

 duced from mere abstract reasonings about human nature, or 

 obtained inductively from the mere observation of contem- 

 porary social phenomena. All theories formed in this way, 

 without reference to the order of historic progression, are in 

 danger of being stated too absolutely, and are wont to give 

 birth only to Utopian projects. Comte was never weary of 

 pointing out the errors of those political economists who 

 deduce general laws of accumulation and distribution from 

 the industrial phenomena presented by a single country at a 

 particular epoch ; or of those moralists who base their theories 

 upon that absurdest of aphorisms, that " human nature is 

 always and everywhere the same " ; or of those legislators 

 who, in ignorance of the fact that humanity is travelling in 

 a definite and partially ascertainable direction, fondly hope to 



