the philosophical spirit to admit in principle that the collective organism is necessarily subject, like the individual, , to a spontaneous decline, independently of changes in the medium. The one has no more tendency to rejuvenescence than the other; and the only difference in the two cases is in the immensity of duration and slow progression in the one, compared with the brief existence, so rapidly run through, of the other. There is no reason why, because we decline the metaphysical notion of indefinite perfectibility, we should be discouraged in our efforts to ameliorate the social state; as the health of individuals is ministered to when destruction is certainly near at hand. Nor need we attempt to determine the last aspects that the philosophical spirit will assume, in an extremely remote future, always ready as that spirit is to recognize, without any fruitless disturbance, any destiny which is clearly inevitable, in order to solace the natural pain of decline by nobly sustaining the dignity of humanity. It is too soon in infancy to prepare for old age; and there would be less wisdom in such preparation in the collective than in the individual case. As to the case of practical knowledge, the most obvious prospect is of the permanent agreement that will be established between the practical point of view and the speculative, when both are alike subordinated to the philosophical. The practical development must go on rapidly under the ascendancy of rational positivity; and, on the other hand, technical advancement will be equally efficacious in proving the immense superiority of the true scientific system to the desultory state of speculation that existed before. The sense of action and that of prevision are closely connected, through their common dependence on the principle of natural law; and this connection must tend to popularize and consolidate the new philosophy, in which each one will perceive the realization of the same general course with regard to all subjects accessible to our reason. The medical art, and the political, will be instances, when they shall rise out of their present infantile state, and be rationalized under the influence of a true philosophical unity, and concrete studies shall, at the same time, have been properly instituted. As the most complex phenomena are the most susceptible of modification, the

true relation between speculation and action will be most conspicuous in the provinces which are most nearly concerned with the human condition and progress. Such will be the results in the intellectual portion of future human life.

The moral action.

As to the moral,-its antagonism with the intellectual will be proved to be what we have shown it-merely provisional; and dissolved at once when the sociological point of view is established as the only true one. I need not dwell on so clear a point as the moral tendency of the scientific elevation of the social point of view, and of the logical supremacy of collective conceptions, such as characterize the positive philosophy. In our present state of anarchy, we see nothing that can give us an idea of the energy and tenacity that moral rules must acquire when they rest on a clear understanding of the influence that the actions and the tendencies of every one of us must exercise on human life.. There will be an end then of the subterfuges by which even sincere believers have been able to elude moral prescriptions, since religious doctrines have lost their social efficacy. The sentiment of fundamental order will then retain its steadiness in the midst of the fiercest disturbance. The intellectual unity of that time will not only determine practical moral convictions in individual minds, but will also generate powerful public prepossession, by disclosing a plenitude of assent, such as has never existed in the same degree, and will supply the insufficiency of private efforts, in cases of very imperfect culture, or entanglement of passion. The instrumentality will not be merely the influence of moral doctrine, which would seldom avail to restrain vicious inclinations: there would be first the action of a universal education, and then the steady intervention of a wise discipline, public and private, carried on by the same moral power which had superintended the earlier training. The results cannot be even imagined without the guidance of the doctrines themselves, under their natural division into personal, domestic, and social morality.

Morality must become more practical than it ever could be under religious influences,

Personal morality.

because personal morality will be seen in its true relations,-withdrawn from all influences of personal prudence, and recognized as the basis of all morality whatever, and therefore as a matter of general concern and public rule. The ancients had some sense of this, which they could not carry out; and Catholicism lost it by introducing a selfish and imaginary aim. We should fix our attention on the advantages that must arise from the concentration of human efforts on an actual life, individual and collective, which Man is impelled to ameliorate as much as possible in its whole economy, according to the whole of the means within his power, among which, moral rules certainly hold the very first place, because they especially admit of the universal concurrence in which our chief power resides. If we are thus brought back from an immoderate regard to the future by a sense of the value of the present, this will equalize life by discouraging excessive economical preparation; while a sound appreciation of our nature, in which vicious or unregulated propensities originally abound, will render common and unanimous the obligation to discipline, and regulate our various inclinations. Again, the scientific and moral conception of Man as the chief of the economy of nature will be a steady stimulus to the cultivation of the noble qualities, affective as well as intellectual, which place him at the head of the living hierarchy. There can be no danger of apathy in a position like this, with the genuine and just pride of such pre-eminence stirring within us; and above us the type of perfection, below which we must remain, but which will ever be inviting us upwards. The result will be a noble boldness in developing the greatness of Man in all directions, free from the oppression of any fear, and limited only by the conditions of life itself. As for Domestic. domestic morality, we have seen what is the subordination prescribed by nature in the cases of sex and of age. It is here, where sociology and biology meet, that we find how profoundly natural social relations are, as they are immediately connected with the mode of existence of all the higher animals, of which Man is only the more complete development: and an application of the uniform positive principle of classification, abstract and concrete,

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will consolidate this elementary subordination, by connecting it with the whole of the speculative constitution. It will moreover be found that progression will develop more and more the natural differences on which such an economy is based, so that each element will tend towards the mode of existence most suitable to itself, and consonant with the general welfare. While the positive spirit will consolidate the great moral ideas which belong to this first stage of association, it will exhibit the increasing importance of domestic life for the vast majority of men, as modern sociality approaches its truest condition; and the natural order, by which domestic life becomes the proper introduction to social, will be established, past risk of change.

The positive philosophy is the first that has Social. ascertained the true point of view of social morality. The metaphysical philosophy sanctioned egotism; and the theological subordinated real life to an imaginary one; while the new philosophy takes social morality for the basis of its whole system. The two former systems were so little favourable to the rise of the purely disinterested affections, that they often led to a dogmatic denial of their existence; the one being addicted to scholastic subtleties, and the other to considerations of personal safety. No set of feelings can be fully developed otherwise than by special and permanent exercise; and especially if they are not naturally very prominent; and the moral sense, the social degree of which is its completest manifestation, could be only imperfectly instituted by the indirect and factitious culture of a preparatory stage. We have yet to witness the moral superiority of a philosophy which connects each of us with the whole of human existence, in all times and places. The restriction of our expectations to actual life must furnish new means of connecting our individual development with the universal progression, the growing regard to which will afford the only possible, and the utmost possible, satisfaction to our natural aspiration after eternity. For instance, the scrupulous respect for human life, which has always increased with our social progression, must strengthen more and more as the chimerical hope dies out which disparages

.

the present life as merely accessory to the one in prospect. The philosophical spirit being only an extension of good sense, it is certain that it alone, in its spontaneous form, has for three centuries maintained any general agreement against the dogmatic disturbances occasioned or tolerated by the ancient philosophy, which would have overthrown the whole modern economy if popular wisdom had not restrained the social application of it. The effects are, at best, only too evident; the practical intervention of the old philosophy taking place only in cases of very marked disorder, such as must be always impending and ever renewed while the intellectual anarchy which generates it yet exists. By its various aptitudes, positive morality will tend more and more to exhibit the happiness of the individual as depending on the complete expansion of bene⚫volent acts and sympathetic emotions towards the whole of our race; and even beyond our race, by a gradual extension to all sentient beings below us, in proportion to their animal rank and their social utility. The relative nature of the new philosophy will render it applicable, with equal facility and accuracy, to the exigencies of each case, individual or social, whereas we see how the absolute character of religious morality has deprived it of almost all force in cases which, arising after its institution, could not have been duly provided for. Till the full rational

establishment of positive morality has taken place, it is the business of true philosophers, ever the precursors of their race, to confirm it in the estimation of the world by the sustained superiority of their own conduct, personal, domestic, and social; giving the strongest conceivable evidence of the possibility of developing, on human grounds alone, a sense of general morality complete enough to inspire an invincible repugnance to moral offence, and an irresistible impulse to steady practical devotedness.

The political results of the positive philoPolitical ac- sophy have been so mixed up with the whole

tion.

treatment of the future in this volume, and the near future has been so expressly exhibited in the twelfth chapter, that I need say little here under that head. I have only to glance at the growth and application of the division between the spiritual or theoretical