conviction that no collective adhesion can be looked for during the stage when men's prejudices and passions will be hurt more sensibly than their best desires will be gratified. The empiricism and egotism that belong to our anarchical condition are but too congenial to the youth of society and every class resists the proposal of a new classification: and thus, all accessions will be, for some time, of individuals. But from all quarters due support will arise. If, in the last century, the negative philosophy, with all its anarchical tendencies, found support even from kings, because it corresponded with the needs of the time, we may surely hope for an equivalent reception for the positive philosophy in the nineteenth century, when from it alone we may hope for what we need,—the reestablishment of a normal condition in the most advanced state of society, and the extinction of the collisions which are occasioned by intellectual and moral anarchy, and which are spreading with its propagation. National participation. Such must I have adhered throughout my survey and speculation to my original limitation,-speaking solely of Western Europe, and taking no notice whatever of the rest of the human race. be the course of the positive philosophers, who must leave the Asiatic tribes, and even those of Eastern Europe, to work out for themselves their preparatory conditions, and enter into the most advanced, as the circumstances of a future age shall determine. It is not our business to decide by anticipation what that preparatory course must be, nor when it shall terminate; nor to suppose that each race or nation must imitate in all particulars the mode of progression of those which have gone before. Except for the maintenance of general peace, or the natural extension of industrial relations, Western Europe must avoid any large political intervention in the East; and there is as much to be done at home as can occupy all the faculties of the most advanced portion of the human race. Though the five nations of Western Europe are essentially homogeneous, there are differences among them all which affect the reception and establishment of the positive philosophy and organization. The survey that we have made of the negative and positive progression affords us France. materials for a judgment as to the aptitude of each, all local prejudice being, as far as possible, discarded. France is pointed out by all evidence as the chief seat of social reorganization, from the decomposition of the old system being earlier and more complete there than elsewhere, and the various kinds of scientific and æsthetic evolution being, if not more advanced, of greater social influence than in other countries. Industry, if not specially developed to the greatest extent, has carried up the temporal power to an unparalleled political position; and there is a national unity in France which is remarkable for its completeness and permanence. The disposition of men of science, philosophy, and art, all over Europe, to regard Paris as a common country, is as significant as the subordination of all France to Paris, in showing that the foremost place, which has been so hardly acquired, is likely to be maintained. I am disposed to think that Italy. Italy comes next, in spite of her want of nationality. The military spirit is more nearly extinct there than anywhere else; the theological emancipation is complete, as regards cultivated minds: and there may we find the strongest traditional sense of the division between the spiritual and the temporal powers. The scientific and industrial evolutions are almost as much advanced as in France, but with less social effect, from the extinction of the theological and aristocratic spirit being less popular. Both are nearer however to their final ascendancy than in any other nation. The aesthetic evolution is, as I need hardly say, so nearly complete and universal, as to have sustained speculative life in even the lower order of minds. The want of nationality must keep back Italy from such a political leadership as is reserved for France; but the propagation of the original movement is not hindered by this. On the contrary, the spiritual reorganization may be thereby stimulated, as a result both of the special presence of Catholicism and of the greater eagerness for a European unity, from the impossibility of establishing an Italian one; that European unity being obtainable only through intellectual and moral regeneration. Germany. Next comes the German nation, because the military or feudal, and even the religious spirit, while less thoroughly exhausted than in Italy, is not so dangerously incorporated with the movement of modern society as in England. Nor is the political influence of Protestantism so inwrought and universal; nor has the temporal concentration of power assumed the aristocratic form, but the far more favourable one of monarchy. The great danger is from the metaphysical spirit, which is doubtless more · prevalent there than anywhere else; but it is certainly rapidly on the decline. Apart from that, the positive evolution is, in nearly all its departments, more advanced than in England, and especially in regard to the social influence which belongs to it. Though the philosophy may be mistaken, the philosophical spirit of the Germans disposes them to general meditation, which compensates largely for the dispersive tendencies of our scientific specialities. The industrial evolution, while less developed than in England, is nearer to its ultimate destination, because its expansion has been more independent of aristocratic rule. The want of nationality, occasioned mainly by Protestantism, may be of a different character from the Italian; but it acts in the same way as a stimulus to the positive regeneration which is to be the common inheritance of Western Europe. The English nation seems to be, for reasons already exhibited, less prepared for such an issue than any other branch of the great family, except Spain, where retarding influences of a special kind have been at work. We have seen how the feudal spirit, and the theological also, have preserved a dangerous political consistence, by means of the modification which they have gradually undergone,-a consistence which is compatible with partial evolutions of considerable duration, but is a serious obstacle to final reorganization. The retrograde, or at least the stationary system, had been organized there with unusual strength, in both its spiritual and its temporal province. The English constitution is as hostile as Jesuitism itself to human emancipation; and the material compensation which has been offered as a bond of incorporation with the modern movement has become, amidst a great excitement of industrial activity, a serious political hindrance in many ways, among others, by protracting the sway of an aristocracy which stands, in England. virtue of a military principle, at the head of a practical movement; by vitiating the mental habits of the people at large, through an exorbitant prevalence of concrete and utilitarian views; and again, by encouraging, to the injury of the national morals and manners, a pride and cupidity which tend to separate the English people from the rest of the European family. This disposition has impaired, as we have seen, the development of science, and also of art, with the exception of Poetry, great as are the individual examples of achievement in both: and the social influence of both is more immature than in France, Italy, or Germany. All this is no hindrance to the new philosophy finding more effectual help from individuals in England than anywhere else, except in France, prepared as such minds are by the social state in which they live. They are saved from the chimerical hope, so fatal on the continent, of redemption by means of a universal imitation of the British constitution, whose transitory and inadequate character must be better understood at home than on the continent. Again, if the practical spirit be exorbitant, it brings one advantage with it,-that, while it does not check general meditation in minds to which such contemplations are congenial, it gives them a character of clearness and reality which is not to be found elsewhere. Finally, in consequence of the inferior social importance of scientific bodies, individual savants have more originality than on the continent, and can better withstand the dispersive tendencies that belong to the régime of speciality, the philosophical conversion of which will probably encounter fewer obstacles in England than in France. There is no occasion to justify at any length my assigning the last place to Spain. Though the retrograde Spain. system is in reality less substantial than in England, it is more repressive, from being badly administered. The extreme enforcement of Catholicism has been less favourable than in Italy to mental emancipation, and to the maintenance of the political habits of the Middle Ages in regard to the separation of the two powers. In the last respect the Catholic spirit was much impaired through a too close incorporation with the system of government; so as rather to excite vicious theocratic RESULTS OF THE SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY. 343 tendencies than to promote a rational co-ordination between the moral and the political power. These considerations however do not impair the claims of Spain to admission into the great European commonwealth, where former connection is an all-sufficient reason for present inclusion, notwithstanding some incidental embarrassment, philosophical or political, that may thence arise. The resistance of the Spanish people to the oppressive invasion of Bonaparte testifies to a moral energy and political tenacity which, in that country particularly, reside in the mass of the people, and guarantee their fitness for the final system when their special liabilities to retardation shall have been outgrown. of thinkers. We see that the preparation for the positive system is unequal among these five nations: and it follows that in the working out of the scheme their respective advantages should be laid hold of, and converted into means of fulfilment. This must be done by the co-operation of the best minds in each nation, who should systematize the intellectual and moral offices which are Co-operation declined more and more by the European governments, and delivered over to independent thinkers. Such thinkers may form a positive Council, under one form. or another, and act either by reviewing and renovating all human conceptions; or by instituting seats of education. for the advancement of positive knowledge, and the training of fit coadjutors; or by regulating the application of the system through unremitting instruction of all kinds, and even by philosophical intervention in the political conflicts which must arise till the old social action is exhausted. By the review of the former social states of mankind, and the sketch of the future organization of society which I have now completed, I trust I have fully redeemed my promises, as offered both at the beginning of this work, and at the outset of the sociological portion. Results of the At a time when moral and political convic- Sociological tions are fluctuating for want of a sufficient theory. intellectual basis, I have laid the logical foundation of firm convictions, able to withstand discordant passions, public |