AUGUSTE COMTE [23 



He thus approaches the theory of many modern sociologists who 

 hold that society is a psychological organism. This fact of 

 psychical unity, according to Comte, distinguishes sociology from 

 biology which makes the individual organism the unit of investi- 

 gation. After setting forth this contrast he says: " The evolu- 

 tion of the individual mind can disclose no essential law: and it 

 can afford neither indications nor verifications of any value 

 unless brought under the methods of observation taught by the 

 evolution of the human mind in general." 1 



This doctrine furnishes the key to this theory of education: 

 " The sociological theory requires that the education of the in- 

 dividual should be a reproduction, rapid but accurate, of that of 

 the race. In his brief career, he must pass through the three 

 stages which an aggregate of nations has wrought out with infi- 

 nite comparative slowness; and if any material part of the ex- 

 perience is evaded, his training will be abortive." 2 Comte thus 

 reaches deductively a theory of recapitulation very much like 

 that of some modern psychologists and pedagogues which they 

 claim to have reached by inductive methods. The individual 

 mind is real then, and able to perform its functions, according to 

 our author, only as it partakes of the general mind, or is produced 

 and moulded by it, — and this is a form of passive spiritual 

 adaptation. 



Another point emphasized by Comte, bearing on this doctrine, 

 is his theory of the family as a training school for social adjust- 

 ment. 3 



Active Spiritual Adaptation.— Reacting as Comte did upon the 

 methods of social reconstruction of his day, we might have ex- 

 pected that he would have gone to the other extreme as did 

 Spencer and Gumplowicz, but instead we find a compromise, — 

 a recognition of natural law but also a law possible of modifica- 

 tion by human intelligence and effort. " Though modifications 

 from all causes," he says, " are greater in the case of political 

 than of simpler phenomena, still they can never be more than 

 modifications: that is, they will always be in subjection to those 



1 Positive Philosophy, ii, p. 509. 2 Ibid., ii, p. 510. 



3 Ibid., ii, p. 133. 



