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nism. The restricted view of each of the agents of such a mechanism
prevents their co-operation, except under the immediate alarm of mate-
rial anarchy, when they suspend their useless controversies till the storm
has blown over, when they go on as before, till some catastrophe ensues,
taking everybody by surprise, though any one might have foreseen it. In
this discarding of social speculation for the sake of material and imme-
diate considerations, we see a fresh indication that intellectual anarchy
is the main cause of our social maladies.
A fourth characteristic of our social condition is a natural conse-
quence and complement of the preceding; the incompetence of the minds
which occupy the chief political stations, during such a condition of
affairs, and even their antipathy to a true reorganization: so that a final,
and not less disastrous illusion of modern society is that the solution of
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the problem may be looked for from those who can do nothing but hinder
it. From what we have already seen, we must be aware that the gradual
demolition of all social maxims, and at the same time, the attenuation of
political action, must tend to remove elevated minds and superior un-
derstandings from such a career, and to deliver over the political world
to the rule of charlatanism and mediocrity. The absence of any distinct
and large conception of a social future is favourable to the more vulgar
forms of ambition and presumptuous and enterprising mediocrity has
never before had so fortunate a chance. While social principles are not
even sought, charlatanism will always attract by the magnificence of its
promises; and its transient successes will dazzle society, while in a suf-
fering condition and deprived of all rational hope. Every impulse of
noble ambition must turn the best men away from a field of action where
there is no chance of scope and permanence, such as are requisite to the
carrying-out of generous schemes. It is, as M. Guizot has well said, a
social period when men will feebly, but desire immensely. It is a state of
half-conviction and half-will, resulting from intellectual and moral an-
archy, offering many obstacles to the solution of our difficulties. It is
important, however, not to exaggerate those obstacles. This very state
of half-conviction and half-will tends to facilitate by anticipation the
prevalence of a true conception of society which, once produced, will
have no active resistance to withstand, because it will repose on serious
convictions: and at present, the dispersion of social interests tends to
preserve the material order which is an indispensable condition of philo-
sophical growth. It would be a mere satirical exaggeration to describe
existing society as preferring political quackery and illusion to that wise
settlement which it has not had opportunity to obtain. When the choice
is offered, it will be seen whether the attraction of deceptive promises,
and the power of former habit, will prevent our age from entering, with
ardour and steadiness, upon a better course. There are evident symp-
toms that the choice will be a wise one, though the circumstances of the
time operate to place the direction of the movement in hands which are
anything but fittest for the purpose. This inconvenience dates from the
beginning of the revolutionary period, and is not a new, but an aggra-
vated evil. For three centuries past, the most eminent minds have been
chiefly engaged with science, and have neglected politics, thus differing
widely from the wisest men in ancient times, and even in the Middle
Ages. The consequence of this is that the most difficult and urgent
questions have been committed to the class which is essentially one un-
152/Auguste Comte
der two names,—the civilians and the metaphysicians, or, under their
common title, the lawyers and men of letters, whose position in regard
to statesmanship is naturally a subordinate one. We shall see hereafter
that from its origin to the time of the first French Revolution, the system
of metaphysical polity was expressed and directed by the universities on
the one hand and the great judiciary corporations on the other: the first
constituting a sort of spiritual, and the other the temporal power. This
state of things is still traceable in most countries of the continent while
in France, for above half a century, the arrangement has degenerated
into such an abuse that the judges are superseded by the bar, and the
doctors (as they used to be called) by mere men of letters; so that now,
any man who can hold a pen may aspire to the spiritual regulation of
society, through the press or from the professional chair uncondition-
ally, and whatever may be his qualifications. When the time comes for
the constitution of an organic condition, the reign of sophists and de-
claimers will have come to an end; but there will be the impediment to
surmount of their having been provisionally in possession of public con-
fidence.
The survey that we have made must convince us only too well of the
anarchical state of existing society, under its destitution of guiding and
governing ideas, and amidst its conflict of opinions and passions, which
there is no power in any of the three schools to cure or moderate. As
preliminary considerations, these facts are deeply disheartening; and we
cannot wonder that some generous and able, but ill-prepared minds should
have sum. into a kind of philosophical despair about the future of soci-
ety, which appears to them doomed to fall under a gloomy despotism or
into mere anarchy, or to oscillate between the two. I trust that the study
we are about to enter upon will give rise to a consoling conviction that
the movement of regeneration is going on, though quietly in comparison
with the apparent decomposition, and that the most advanced of the
human race are at the threshold of a social order worthy of their nature
and their needs. I shall conclude this introduction by showing what must
necessarily be the intellectual character of the salutary philosophy which
is to lead us into this better future: and its dogmatic exposition will
follow in the next chapter.
The preliminary survey which I have just concluded led us neces-
sarily into the domain of politics. We must now return from this excur-
sion, and take our stand again at the point of view of this whole Work,
and contemplate the condition and prospects of society from the ground
Positive Philosophy/153
of positive philosophy. Every other ground has been found untenable.
The theological and metaphysical philosophies have failed to secure
permanent social welfare, while the positive philosophy has uniformly
succeeded, and conspicuously for three centuries past, in reorganizing,
to the unanimous satisfaction of the intellectual world, all the anterior
orders of human conceptions, which had been till then in the same cha-
otic state that we now deplore, in regard to social science. Contempo-
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