ir value, and the temper is not the same, nor the
method. But the two are quite capable of being regarded, and for the
purposes of an account of Comte's career ought to be regarded, as an
integral whole. His letters when he was a young man of one and twenty,
and before he had published a word, show how strongly present the
social motive was in his mind, and in what little account he should
hold his scientific works, if he did not perpetually think of their
utility for the species. 'I feel,' he wrote, 'that such scientific
reputation as I might acquire would give more value, more weight, more
useful influence to my political sermons.' In 1822 he published a
_Plan of the Scientific Works necessary to Reorganise Society_. In
this opuscule he points out that modern society is passing through a
great crisis, due to the conflict of two opposing movements,--the
first, a disorganising movement owing to the break-up of old
institutions and beliefs; the second, a movement towards a definite
social state, in which all means of human prosperity will receive
their most complete development and most direct application. How is
this crisis to be dealt with? What are the undertakings necessary in
order to pass successfully through it towards an organic state? The
answer to this is that there are two series of works. The first is
theoretic or spiritual, aiming at the development of a new principle
of co-ordinating social relations and the formation of the system of
general ideas which are destined to guide society. The second work is
practical or temporal; it settles the distribution of power and the
institutions that are most conformable to the spirit of the system
which has previously been thought out in the course of the theoretic
work. As the practical work depends on the conclusions of the
theoretical, the latter must obviously come first in order of
execution.

[2] The English reader is specially well placed for
satisfying such curiosity as he may have about Comte's
philosophy. Miss Martineau condensed the six volumes of the
_Philosophie Positive_ into two volumes of excellent English
(1853); Comte himself gave them a place in the Positivist
Library. The _Catechism_ was translated by Dr. Congreve in
1858. The _Politique Positive_ has been reproduced in English
(Longmans, 1875-1877) by the conscientious labour of Comte's
London followers. This translation is accomp