192 COSMIC PHILOSOPHY. [ft. in. 



opposing tlie very reforms which a little science might tell 

 us that the community requires and will have, sooner or 

 later, in spite of us. I do not mean to say that a knowledge 

 of the laws of history will alone suffice to make ns states- 

 men. Science and art are two different things, and so are 

 scientific genius and practical genius. But if a Themistokles 

 or a Hildebrand were to arise among us, he would be all 

 the more useful for working in conformity to scientific prin- 

 ciples, instead of trusting solely to his native sagacity. It 

 is when genius works with vision that it achieves its utmost. 

 And when we cannot have genius, by all means let us have 

 vision, so far as science can impart it to us. Daily we grow 

 indignant over the hand-to-mouth policy of our legislators, 

 which inflicts so much needless suffering, and makes it so 

 much harder for all of us to earn our bread. But we must 

 remember that such a policy is the natural outcome of a 

 foolish neglect of the lessons which history has to teach, 

 and which may be read by anyone who holds the scientific 

 clue to them. 



Such is our practical object, and our sole practical object, 

 in studying sociology as a science. To attempt to construct 

 an ideal polity, by adopting which society is to remodel 

 itself, is to show that we have studied that science to little 

 purpose. For if history can teach us anything, it can teach 

 us that civilization is a slow growth, of which no one can 

 foresee, save in its most general features, the final result ; 

 far less force that result prematurely merely by appeals to 

 men's judgment. 



How utterly Comte ignored all this — the plain teaching 

 both of historic induction, and of deduction from the laws 

 of organic life — can be appreciated only when we read the 

 insane pages in which he attempts to predict the immediate 

 future. He by no means intended that society should wait 

 till a remote era for the entire realization of his project. In 

 seven years the control of public education in France was to 



