uths; the whole erection, ascending to the science of
sociology, which includes a dynamical as well as a statical doctrine
of human society--a doctrine of the laws of progress as well as of
the laws of order--is crowned by morals.

In the polity of positivism the supreme spiritual power is entrusted
to a priesthood of science. Their moral influence will be chiefly
directed to reinforcing the social feeling, altruism, as against the
predominance of self-love. The object of religious reverence is not
God, but the "Great Being"--Humanity, the society of the noble living
and the noble dead, the company, or rather the unity, of all those
who contribute to the better life of man. To Humanity we pay our vows,
we yield our gratitude, we render our homage, we direct our
aspirations; for Humanity we act and live in the blessed subordination
of egoistic desire. Women--the mother, the wife, the daughter--purifying
through affection the energies of man, act, under the Great Being, as
angelic guardians, accomplishing a moral providence.

Comte's theory of the three states, theological, metaphysical, and
positive, was accepted by PIERRE JOSEPH PROUDHON (1809-65), a far
more brilliant writer, a far less constructive thinker, and aided
him in arriving at conclusions which differ widely from those of Comte.
Son of a cooper at Besancon, Proudhon had the virtues of a true child
of the people--integrity, affection, courage, zeal, untiring energy.
Religion he would replace by morality, ardent, strict, and pure. Free
associations of workmen, subject to no spiritual or temporal
authority, should arise over all the land. _Qu'est-ce que la
Propriete?_ he asked in the title of a work published in 1840; and
his answer was, _La Propriete c'est le Vol_. Property, seizing upon
the products of labour in the form of rent or interest, and rendering
no equivalent, is theft. Justice demands that service should be repaid
by an equal service. Society, freely organising itself on the
principles of liberty and justice, requires no government; only
through such anarchy as this can true order be attained. An apostle
of modern communism, Proudhon, by ideas leavening the popular mind,
became no insignificant influence in practical politics.

CHAPTER III
POETRY OF THE ROMANTIC SCHOOL

I

The eighteenth century did homage to the reason; it sought for general
truths, scientific, social, political; its art was in the main an
inheritance, diminished wit