404 An Estimate of Auguste Comte . [July, 
cerebellum and the latter in its sides. Benevolence he 
places at the highest point of the cerebrum, and veneration 
immediately behind it. It is to be noticed that Comte does 
not commit the error of denying to animals the possession 
of the moral sentiments, as do some phrenologists, despite 
the evidence of these sentiments in their conduct, and 
despite the faCt that their brains — i.e those of the an- 
thropoid apes — do not differ from our own in the manner and 
to the extent which this assumption would require. 
Now let us turn to the last member of the hierarchy, — 
sociology. Comte certainly proclaimed that human society 
had its inherent laws, not dependent upon the caprice of 
rulers or statesmen, or upon the exertions of demagogues or 
stump-orators ; laws capable of being discovered by the very 
same methods which we are successfully following in che- 
mistry or in biology.* Few competent judges will here join 
issue. But has he really placed in our hahds a clue capable 
of being followed up ? Are we making any definite pro- 
gress ? Look, for instance, at our Social Science Congress, 
well characterised as an assemblage “ of men who ought to 
have been women, and of women who wish to be men.” Its 
Transactions are filled not with the attempt to reduce social 
phenomena under laws capable of verification, and leading 
to the prevision of faCts not yet observed, but with an olla 
podrida of declamation on every subject that can be construed 
as having any reference to human society, with rhapsodies 
on sewage-irrigation, woman’s rights, coddling criminals, 
infectious diseases, anti-vaccination, trades’-unionism, and 
the like, — the whole floating in an opaque and lukewarm 
whey of self-complacency and mutual admiration. Comte 
to blame for all this ? By no means ; but that such farces 
can still be enaCted under the name of “ social science ” 
shows that a definite plan has not yet been drawn out. 
On no ground has Comte been more strongly and more 
unjustly denounced than anent his rejection of “political 
economy.” He condemns it as the outcome of a merely 
critical and negative philosophy, isolating itself from the 
whole to which it should rightfully belong, and seeking to 
take its place. In his rejection he seems, howevpr, to me 
to have been guided by a correct principle. For what is, 
after all, political economy ? Simply the study of man 
viewed solely as a producer, accumulator, distributor, and 
* I cannot find that Comte anywhere recognises the necessity of studying 
the simpler societies of the lower animals before proceeding to examine the 
more complicated polity of our own species. Yet he elsewhere lays down 
principles from which the importance of such a step would plainly follow. 
