rmed theories for the future, grounded on
historical analysis of the past. Tocqueville, for example, and others,
finding, as they thought, through all history, a steady progress in the
direction of social and political equality, argued that to smooth this
transition, and make the best of what is certainly coming, is the proper
employment of political foresight. We do not find M. Comte supporting
his recommendations by a similar line of argument. They rest as
completely, each on its separate reasons of supposed utility, as with
philosophers who, like Bentham, theorize on politics without any
historical basis at all. The only bridge of connexion which leads from
his historical speculations to his practical conclusions, is the
inference, that since the old powers of society, both in the region of
thought and of action, are declining and destined to disappear, leaving
only the two rising powers, positive thinkers on the one hand, leaders
of industry on the other, the future necessarily belongs to these:
spiritual power to the former, temporal to the latter. As a specimen of
historical forecast this is very deficient; for are there not the masses
as well as the leaders of industry? and is not theirs also a growing
power? Be this as it may, M. Comte's conceptions of the mode in which
these growing powers should be organized and used, are grounded on
anything rather than on history. And we cannot but remark a singular
anomaly in a thinker of M. Comte's calibre. After the ample evidence he
has brought forward of the slow growth of the sciences, all of which
except the mathematico-astronomical couple are still, as he justly
thinks, in a very early stage, it yet appears as if, to his mind, the
mere institution of a positive science of sociology were tantamount to
its completion; as if all the diversities of opinion on the subject,
which set mankind at variance, were solely owing to its having been
studied in the theological or the metaphysical manner, and as if when
the positive method which has raised up real sciences on other subjects
of knowledge, is similarly employed on this, divergence would at once
cease, and the entire body of positive social inquirers would exhibit
as much agreement in their doctrines as those who cultivate any of the
sciences of inorganic life. Happy would be the prospects of mankind if
this were so. A time such as M. Comte reckoned upon may come; unless
something stops the progress of human improvement,