These, my dear sir, are, were, and, I think, long will be, the sentiments of not the least learned and reflecting part of this kingdom. They conceive that He Who gave our nature to be perfected by our virtue willed also the necessary means of its perfection. He willed, therefore, the state—He willed its connection with the source and original archetype of all perfection. They who are convinced of His will, which is the law of laws, and the sovereign of sovereigns, cannot think it reprehensible that this, our corporate realty and homage, that this our recognition of a signiory paramount—I had almost said this oblation of the state itself—as a worthy offering on the high altar of universal praise, should be performed with modest splendour and unassuming state. For those purposes they think some part of the wealth of the country is as usefully employed as it can be in fomenting the luxury of individuals.
It is on some such principles that the majority of the people of England, far from thinking a religious national establishment unlawful, hardly think it lawful to be without one. The commons of Great Britain, in the national emergencies, will never seek their resource from the confiscation of the estates of the church and poor. Sacrilege and proscription are not among the ways and means of our committee of supply. There is not one public man in this kingdom, of any party or description, who does not reprobate the dishonest, perfidious, and cruel confiscation which the national assembly have been compelled to make of that property which it was their first duty to protect.
But to what end should we discuss all these things? How shall we discuss the limitations of royal power? Your king is in prison. Why speculate on the measure and standard of liberty? I doubt very much indeed whether France is at all ripe for liberty on any standard. Society cannot exist unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere, and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without. It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters.
AUGUSTE COMTE
A Course of Positive Philosophy
Isidore Auguste Marie François Xavier Comte, the founder of the Positive philosophy, was born at Montpellier, in France, Jan. 19, 1798. Entering the Ecole Polytechnique at Paris in his seventeenth year, he showed mathematical talent, but was expelled for insubordination. In 1818 he met St. Simon, and for six years he remained under the influence of that philosopher; but in 1824 he broke away and entered on an independent philosophical career. In 1826 he expounded to a distinguished audience his system of Positive philosophy, but during the course had an attack of insanity which lasted for a few months. Between 1830 and 1842 he published his "Cours de Philosophie Positive." From 1835 to 1845 he acted as examiner at the Ecole Polytechnique, but after 1845 he was supported by a "subsidy" from his admirers. Comte married in 1825, but his marriage was not happy, and ended in a separation in 1842. He died on September 5, 1857. His other important works are "The System of Positive Politics" and the "Positivist Catechism."
I.—Positive Classification of the Sciences
On studying the development of human intelligence, it is found that it passes through three stages: (1) The theological, (2) the metaphysical, (3) the scientific or positive. In the theological stage it seeks to account for the world by supernatural beings. In the metaphysical stage it seeks an explanation in abstract forces. In the scientific, or positive, stage it applies itself to the study of the relation of phenomena to each other.