CHAP, in THE APPEAL TO BIOLOGY 33 



authority, and in the bankruptcy of the moral con- 

 sciousness any authority is better than none. Nay, 

 for Comte it is the very authority he wants, human 

 and governmental. Yet this doctrine of the social 

 organism is no pronouncement in the name of facts ; 

 it is a moral dictum, picturesquely stated in terms of 

 popular science. The community is doubtless part 

 of the moral authority to which each man owes 

 allegiance. But the parable of the social organism 

 would not win the wide acceptance it does if it were 

 not for the authority of conscience within, and for 

 the training of conscience by the authority of the 

 Christian spirit during centuries. 



We conclude then that the appeal to biology has 

 done Comte a very great service. After he had cut 

 away the foundation of morals he has been able to 

 find a new foundation in the tacit assumption that 

 individual men are bound to the service of the com- 

 mon weal ; and this assumption is masked, and made 

 to look like the statement of a scientific fact, by the 

 process of borrowing a parable from biology. 



Of course it may be rejoined that Comte is much 

 more true to his phenomenalist assumptions, and that 

 he is merely appealing to fact when he uses the bio- 

 logical parable. Any one, it may be said, can see that 

 men are dependent upon society, and that selfishness 

 leads to unhappiness, not to happiness. That, how- 

 ever, suggests hedonism, and hedonism is strange 

 to Comte. Hedonism represents the earlier and 

 probably the more consistent working out of a phe- 

 nomenalist view of human conduct ; but sociology 

 represents a strong reaction from it, as from other 

 manifestations of individualism. Probably it will be 



