The remedy

to be found

in the true picture of the future.

Affinity of
Positivism

vious re

gimes.

prevent the entire dissolution of society, the metaphysicians who advocate progress justify their opponents' alarm by their aspirations, for the practical issue of those aspirations would be the overthrow of all the institutions on which society ultimately rests.

In this state of things, to calm the blind anxiety of the former whilst correcting the vague hopes of the latter, what is needed is a true picture of the future of Humanity. The priesthood of Positivism, connecting directly Sociocracy and Theocracy, will represent the intervening period of transition as inevitable in the West, and as issuing finally in the modification and completion of the original conception of order by the substitution of a relative for an absolute order. The change is indispensable, and in no way implies a lower estimate of order; on the contrary, it consolidates and extends the power of the principle of organisation, as a consequence of duly subordinating movement to existence. This systematic conception of the human order tends to make it more complete and more stable, as more in conformity with our whole nature. Unquestionably the future will witness no return of the series, of a stagnant order, a dispersive transition, and as the latest step in such transition, an oscillation between retrogression and anarchy. What it will see is the continuous developement of a relative synthesis, such developement, even when the result of man's conscious efforts, consisting essentially in the perfecting the unity which constitutes the synthesis. Whilst, however, we allow for systematic modifications of order, there must be none of the abrupt changes which were fated throughout history to be the distinctive features of the second period of the education of mankind.

The great task of the manhood of the race being the for the pre- discipline of the powers developed in its period of preparation, there is a natural connection between our ultimate condition and the complete series of its antecedents. Each singly, looked on as a necessary step in our advance, claims and deserves our gratitude and veneration, a gratitude and veneration which will deepen as our estimate rises of the peculiar difficulties attaching to an evolution which had no guide but experience. Each singly offers more than this, it offers a special programme which, transitory in its original form, is eternal in its substance. Where in the past there was succession, in the future there

must be co-existence, for all the social states of the past, though apparently contradictory, answered to so many wants or tendencies of human nature, and as such must be susceptible of harmony. So we verify the complete and exclusive competence of the Positive religion by virtue of its relative character for the ultimate regeneration of Humanity, to which all our aspirations will converge, each having lost the peculiar features which for the time placed it in opposition with the others.

This affinity of Positivism for all earlier states, an affinity implied in its idea, has been already conclusively shown in the preceding volume, especially in reference to the earliest of all, Fetichism. But the full expansion of the idea belongs to our general survey of the future, for no religion could gain universal acceptance in that future unless able to sanction in a certain degree the various tendencies of the past.

All the prosubordinate

grammes

to that of

the Theo

cracy.

ness the test

of true

discipline.

of China and

At present I have to show the dependence of all these programmes, all alike unsystematic, on the programme of the theocratic period, the Theocracy alone being in its way complete and coherent. True completeness constitutes the main value, as it con- Completestitutes the great difficulty of the discipline of man; if it do not extend to our whole nature, it must ever be precarious as well as inadequate. For thirty centuries the priestly castes of Priesthoods China, and still more of India, have been watching our Western India. transition; to them it must appear mere agitation, as puerile as it is tempestuous, with nothing to harmonise its different phases but their common inroad upon unity. But on the advent of Positivism, they will soon come to feel that the series of partial evolutions has issued in the most complete and most stable order, offering to the East an acceptable union with the West, the concert of the race for the developement of all the attributes of Humanity.

In its systematic constitution of this ultimate state, the definitive re-introduction of the basic formula of the Theocracy is of itself conclusive evidence of the complete agreement of the sociocratic and theocratic priesthoods. To know in order to improve, the motto of our primeval ancestors, will equally, with our remotest posterity, be the expression habitually used to indicate the bounden duty of the intellect to devote itself continuously to the service of society. The intervening period

The maxim

of the Theo

opted by Sociocracy.

Affinity of

Positivism with the

three partial

of transition from one to the other regime has for result the perfecting the formula, by inserting prevision between knowledge and action, as in the absence of this link the agreement between the extremes could not but rest on merely empirical grounds, until the idea of law triumphed over that of will. But the Western mind has been so trained by its more recent education to look upon prevision as the result of theory and the basis of action, that the intermediate term may be suppressed in the formula, provided that we are ever ready to replace it. By this adherence to its original form, we render it more apt to express the really important combination, making it a better definition of true wisdom without diverting the attention in ordinary cases to a progression which is universally admitted.

To appreciate at its true value the indispensable harmony of the two priesthoods, we must extend it so as to embrace their instinctive agreement as to what is the most important sphere of man's effort, of his intellectual no less than his practical effort. Sociocracy adopts definitively the great fundamental tendency of Theocracy to claim for Morals the first place, equally as science and as art. Whilst the theory of human nature controls both in method and doctrine the whole encyclopædic hierarchy, this, the highest branch of study, is in turn controlled by the directly practical nature of its object.

Naturally then the ultimate Synthesis is destined to consolidate and develope the initial in all its leading features, and it will enable us to form a juster estimate of the merit and difficulty of that effort, even whilst establishing an unity of a completer, purer, and more stable kind.

More unmistakeable still is the natural affinity of Positivism for the characteristics respectively of the three periods transitions of transition, each of which, succeeding its predecessor by a necessary law, was the direct source of a distinct contribution to the solution of the Western problem.

(1) Greek.

Although our final state will subordinate the intellect to the heart more wisely than any other could, it will offer a more favourable field for the true culture of man's mental powers than was possible under the undue predominance accorded to the intellect in the Greek evolution. An integral constituent of Positive life, as the normal complement of happiness and improvement, art will evoke purer and more universal

sympathies than it could do when there was a tendency to sacrifice to it feeling and activity. As it has become the doctrinal basis of religion, science, no longer separable from philosophy, will, as disciplined by Sociocracy, enter on wider fields, and acquire a greater power than it could acquire under the undisciplined anarchy which, in the course of events, replaced the oppressive yoke of Theocracy.

In the future, Humanity will stamp with a special sanction (2) Roman. the two characteristics of the social life of Rome: its decided preference of action to speculation, and its constant subordination of private to public life. Drawing out the naturally collective character of human activity, so long of necessity individual, the adult age of the race will embody firmly both these conditions, which have lost but too much during its adolescence, from the inability of Catholicism to accept them. Whilst deeply conscious of the superiority of the industrial to the military life, Positivist nations will ever recognise that war had great moral and political utility as a preparation, being as it was the only spontaneous type of temporal organisation.

æval.

Catholicism was ungrateful to its Greek and Roman ante- (3) Medicedents, but the regenerate West, whilst not deterred by this action of Catholicism from paying habitual honour to our intellectual and social progenitors, will know how to reconcile such honour with due reverence for the Middle Ages. Although the mediæval or affective transition could offer no real discipline for our powers, either of speculation or action, yet from the mere fact that it inherited those powers in an advanced state of cultivation, it was able to give a better form to the programme of man's action than that of the earlier theocracy. The Positivist, equally with the Middle-Age construction, only more directly and more unreservedly, asserts the supremacy of feeling, but without unduly hampering the intellect or activity, and as a natural result of its assertion vindicates the wisdom of Catholicism and the soundness of the feudal instinct.

The relativity, which is its characteristic, enables the final religion fully to recognise the advantages accruing to the race during the two periods of its childhood, from the fusion of the spiritual and temporal powers effected first by the priests, then by the military class. Not the less will it deeply honour the triumphant effort of its adolescence to establish the separation

Affinity with the modern

of the two as their normal relation. The heart and the intellect concur in this conciliatory judgment as indispensable to the true love or the true understanding of the Great Being, the condition of such love or understanding being the right appre ciation of the several periods of unsystematic preparation which must precede its systematic creation.

Impelled by the same relativity, the Western world will Revolution. justly extend its gratitude to the singular period of anarchy which, in the course of events, followed on the above series of transitions of a partially organic character. Ultimately, no doubt, the whole education of the race in its entirety is the basis of settlement, but immediately, the settlement must issue from the double movement of destruction and construction; from the negative as well as the positive operation peculiar to the last five centuries. The true religion has to look for its adherents mainly to the conservative party; but for its origin, it could take its rise nowhere but in the revolutionary camp; there its first germs found a due welcome as heralding the satisfaction of an imperious want, the termination of the revolutionary movement.

Fetichist period reserved.

Result of the

five com

parisons.

In this introductory recapitulation of the points of affinity between the future and each of the great constituent phases of the past, there seems at first sight an omission; it does not include, that is, the regime adapted to the infancy of mankind. The readers of the third volume, however, must have felt that this solitary exception, far from indicating less sympathy between Positivism and Fetichism, is on the contrary a consequence of their closer connection. The various forms of Theologism have wholly to disappear, leaving no other traces as a rule but the perpetual celebration of the services they rendered in their day; hence the obligation to recall their several contributions, so indispensable as steps in the preparation of the ultimate state. Fetichism, on the other hand, alone of the series of educational states, by virtue of its unequalled spontaneity, is destined to incorporation with Positivism, and the passage from the one to the other might be immediate. I was justified then in reserving any indication of this enduring affinity for the occasions which will naturally arise in the course of the volume for its exposition in detail. Summing up the five antecedent comparisons, Sociocracy will combine the synthetic power of the Theocracy with the