we agree with him that the _laisser faire_
doctrine, stated without large qualifications, is both unpractical and
unscientific; but it does not follow that those who assert it are not,
nineteen times out of twenty, practically nearer the truth than those
who deny it. The doctrine of Equality meets no better fate at M. Comte's
hands. He regards it as the erection into an absolute dogma of a mere
protest against the inequalities which came down from the middle ages,
and answer no legitimate end in modern society. He observes, that
mankind in a normal state, having to act together, are necessarily, in
practice, organized and classed with some reference to their unequal
aptitudes, natural or acquired, which demand that some should be under
the direction of others: scrupulous regard being at the same time had to
the fulfilment towards all, of "the claims rightfully inherent in the
dignity of a human being; the aggregate of which, still very
insufficiently appreciated, will constitute more and more the principle
of universal morality as applied to daily use... a grand moral
obligation, which has never been directly denied since the abolition of
slavery" (iv. 51). There is not a word to be said against these
doctrines: but the practical question is one which M. Comte never even
entertains--viz., when, after being properly educated, people are left
to find their places for themselves, do they not spontaneously class
themselves in a manner much more conformable to their unequal or
dissimilar aptitudes, than governments or social institutions are likely
to do it for them? The Sovereignty of the People, again,--that
metaphysical axiom which in France and the rest of the Continent has so
long been the theoretic basis of radical and democratic politics,--he
regards as of a purely negative character, signifying the right of the
people to rid themselves by insurrection of a social order that has
become oppressive; but, when erected into a positive principle of
government, which condemns indefinitely all superiors to "an arbitrary
dependence upon the multitude of their inferiors," he considers it as a
sort of "transportation to peoples of the divine right so much
reproached to kings" (iv. 55, 56). On the doctrine as a metaphysical
dogma or an absolute principle, this criticism is just; but there is
also a Positive doctrine, without any pretension to being absolute,
which claims the direct participation of the governed in their own
gover