lutionaries--lay in conceiving society out of relation to the
past, in ignoring the Middle Ages, and borrowing from Greek and Roman
society retrograde and contradictory ideals.

Napoleon restored order, but he was more injurious to humanity than
any other historical person. His moral and intellectual nature was
incompatible with the true direction of Progress, which involves the
extinction of the theological and military regime of the past. Thus his
work, like Julian the Apostate's, exhibits an instance of deflection
from the line of Progress. Then came the parliamentary system of
the restored Bourbons which Comte designates as a political Utopia,
destitute of social principles, a foolish attempt to combine political
retrogression with a state of permanent peace.

4.

The critical doctrine has performed its historical function, and the
time has come for man to enter upon the Positive stage of his career. To
enable him to take this step forward, it is necessary that the study of
social phenomena should become a positive science. As social science is
the highest in the hierarchy of sciences, it could not develop until
the two branches of knowledge which come next in the scale, biology and
chemistry, assumed a scientific form. This has recently been achieved,
and it is now possible to found a scientific sociology.

This science, like mechanics and biology, has its statics and its
dynamics. The first studies the laws of co-existence, the second those
of succession; the first contains the theory of order, the second
that of progress. The law of consensus or cohesion is the fundamental
principle of social statics; the law of the three stages is that of
social dynamics. Comte's survey of history, of which I have briefly
indicated the general character, exhibits the application of these
sociological laws.

The capital feature of the third period, which we are now approaching,
will be the organisation of society by means of scientific sociology.
The world will be guided by a general theory, and this means that it
must be controlled by those who understand the theory and will know
how to apply it. Therefore society will revive the principle which
was realised in the great period of Monotheism, the distinction of a
spiritual and a temporal order. But the spiritual order will consist of
savants who will direct social life not by theological fictions but
by the positive truths of science. They will administer a system of
unive