in human communities,
as organic, that is to say, as indispensable. And therefore, the unjust
position in which we, the people who have freed ourselves from labor,
find ourselves, must be regarded not from the point of view of common-
sense and justice, but merely as an undoubted fact, confirming the
universal law.

Moral philosophy also justified every sort of cruelty and harshness; but
this resulted in a philosophical manner, and therefore wrongly. But with
science, all this results scientifically, and therefore in a manner not
to be doubted.

How can we fail to accept so very beautiful a theory? It is merely
necessary to look upon human society as an object of contemplation; and I
can console myself with the thought that my activity, whatever may be its
nature, is a functional activity of the organism of humanity, and that
therefore there cannot arise any question as to whether it is just that
I, in employing the labor of others, am doing only that which is
agreeable to me, as there can arise no question as to the division of
labor between the brain cells and the muscular cells. How is it possible
not to admit so very beautiful a theory, in order that one may be able,
ever after, to pocket one's conscience, and have a perfectly unbridled
animal existence, feeling beneath one's self that support of science
which is not to be shaken nowadays!

And it is on this new doctrine that the justification for men's idleness
and cruelty is now founded.

CHAPTER II.

This doctrine had its rise not so very long--fifty years--ago. Its
principal founder was the French _savant_ Comte. There occurred to
Comte,--a systematist, and a religious man to boot,--under the influence
of the then novel physiological investigations of Biche, the old idea
already set forth by Menenius Agrippa,--the idea that human society, all
humanity even, might be regarded as one whole, as an organism; and men as
living parts of the separate organs, having each his own definite
appointment to serve the entire organism.

This idea so pleased Comte, that upon it he began to erect a
philosophical theory; and this theory so carried him away, that he
utterly forgot that the point of departure for his theory was nothing
more than a very pretty comparison, which was suitable for a fable, but
which could by no means serve as the foundation for science. He, as
frequently happens, mistook his pet hypothesis for an axiom, and imagined
that his whole