AUGUSTE COMTE 1 5 



unity of thought and conviction. His philosophical training 

 made acceptable the suggestion of a scientific interpretation of 

 social phenomena such as had already been attempted by 

 Montesquieu, Condorcet and Saint-Simon. It remained for him 

 to work out a complete system in outline which he felt sure would 

 be so convincing as to win speedy and wide-spread acceptance 

 and make social regeneration possible. 1 The fact that the scien- 

 tific method had reached the domain of social phenomena was 

 proof to him that it offered the only possible workable basis for 

 practical politics. 2 He could not but admire the organization of 

 the Roman Catholic church and the power it possessed 3 but he 

 could not agree with de Maistre that it had potency for social 

 reform because it stood for a theological interpretation of life, 

 i. e., a belief in personality as the mainspring of action rather 

 than natural laws. He could not agree any better, however, 

 with the social philosophers of his day who following Rousseau 

 believed in a "return to nature" which seemed to him a denial 

 of social evolution. The metaphysicians had performed their 

 task by destroying the faith of the people in the teachings of 

 theology, but with this had come a destruction of moral authority 

 and a decay in personal and social life which Comte would bring 

 back. " The object of all my labor," he wrote in 1825, " has 

 been to re-establish in society something spiritual that is 

 capable of counterbalancing the influence of the ignoble ma- 

 terialism in which we are at present submerged." 4 Catholicism 

 stood for order but was incapable of inspiring progress. The 

 destruction of Catholicism seemed necessary for progress but 

 such a movement had led to anarchy. Comte's task was to 

 synthesize order and progress and thus destroy the condition of 

 anarchy in morals and politics which reigned in his day, and his 

 method was by an appeal to science. 



Comte's belief that the intellect always and of necessity led in 

 social progress was further reason for his emphasis on the need of 

 a thorough-going social philosophy as the basis for social recon- 



1 By the time he wrote the Polity he had experienced disappointment. 



1 Positive Philosophy, ii, p. 14. 



3 Ibid., ii, pp. 261 ff.; Levy-Briihl, op. cit., p. 363. 



* Levy-Briihl, op. cit., p. 361. 



