scientific labours to which it may give occasion. Their other and complementary duties in reference to practical life will be an additional check upon, or a remedy for, an excess on the side of abstraction. Still, as their action on society requires not merely intellectual capacity, but intellectual capacity combined with rare excellence of heart and character, we must provide for the exceptional cases where the combination is imperfect, and where yet it is desirable not to hinder the intellectual developement. In such anomalous cases, less frequent than is thought at present, Sociocracy relegates to the class of pensioners of the priesthood those who, from deficiency in point of energy or tenderness, are only fit for science. As for the special investigations which may for a time require the concentrated attention of true priests, they may be provided for by appropriate dispensations, without in any case impairing the legitimate supremacy of the disposition to synthesis and sympathy, which is the invariable characteristic of those who direct the relative religion.

of philoso

poetry will

serving the

character.

To the impulse derived from women, and to its own social The fusion destination, we may add, as a protection to the Positive priest-phy and hood against degenerating from excess of abstraction, the fusion, aid in prewhich is an imperative necessity, of philosophy with poetry. If true priestly not combined in close alliance, they are a constant source of grave disturbance in the sociocratic order, as science and art, naturally rivals, claim on equivalent grounds the spiritual direction. Their rivalry is prevented if the priesthood absorbs both capacities in the complete comprehensiveness which is its note, in both its forms-spontaneous and systematic. The distinct advancement of either science or art will not call for more than exceptional efforts, as above stated, when the Positive religion shall have really closed the transitional period, increasingly revolutionary in its character, which lies between us and the Theocracy, the single instance hitherto of a normal society. In the doctrine the office of the priesthood is mainly scientific; in the worship it becomes mainly artistic; in the regime there is equal scope for both powers, for the theoretic in preaching and consecration, for the poetic in consultation and discipline. Art first shook off the yoke of Theocracy, as interfering with any decided growth; science could not but follow its example, to gain power to construct the objective basis of the final religion. All sound philosophy, however, with a presentiment of the

The Priesthood will resume the medical office.

An universal language.

subjective character of the true synthesis, kept constantly before it as its aim a return, under proper conditions, to the plenary sacerdotal organisation, whenever the twofold effort of art and of science should have laid a sufficient basis for its definitive shape.

Philosophical or poetical,-it is indifferent which term we use,―to complete its legitimate attributions, the Positive priesthood must absorb all the other functions, which, as they directly regard man, are in their nature indivisible. Such is pre-eminently the medical-the provisional isolation of which has gradually led to a state of mental and moral degeneration urgently calling for its reincorporation with the priestly office. A portentous venality, combined with irrational speciality, leads in medicine to a blind ignoring of the indivisibility of human nature in the individual as in society. But by virtue of its encyclopædic training, the Positive priesthood will resume the medical office as the inseparable complement of its principal function, a function which connects it with human existence under all its

aspects whatsoever. Two special precautions, however, are necessary in reference to this complement, or the dignity of the priesthood might be lowered by mere manual and cruel duties. The surgical department, reduced to its original subaltern position, must be handed over to those best qualified for it, must belong, that is, to the surgical instrument makers, when qualified by an encyclopædic education to avail themselves of the special opportunities afforded by their profession. So again, postmortem examinations will be limited to the functionary who, in the name of Humanity, performs the terrible duty of executing murderers; their bodies will be sufficient for the real needs of science in its renovated state.

This outline of the constitution of the priesthood would be incomplete unless I pointed out the solution, the natural solution, of a serious difficulty; the difficulty, viz., consequent on the necessity of the extension of the Positive religion to all portions of the Earth. Evidently, its universal adoption depends on the existence of a common language, as is explained in the fourth chapter of the second volume. Its formation occupied the leading thinkers, dating from the period at which the Western revolution evoked strongly marked aspirations for a definitive reorganisation. But the metaphysical spirit led to the mistake of not seeing that such a construction must be spontaneous, its only possible basis

being its elaboration by the people, so that it can only be the result of the unanimous adoption of an existing language. Of the various languages of the West, that must be the best Italian adapted for universal acceptance which has been most cultivated for poetry and music, as soon as appropriate modifications shall have qualified it systematically for its position. Sprung, as it is, from the improvement, in the natural course of things, of the language spoken by the noblest precursors of the definitive social order, it is the best fitted to bind worthily the future to the past. Shaped by the most peaceful and most artistic of European nations, the only one clear of any share in colonisation, it will meet the fewest obstacles to its free adoption everywhere, an adoption which will be secured by the priesthood of Positivism, consecrating it to the worship of Humanity.

classes.

To see the full force of these remarks we must wait for their Practical expansion in the subsequent chapters, but they are sufficient in this place to give a distinct idea of the constitution of the priesthood as a whole. It remains to offer their equivalent as regards industrial life, and I begin with the patriciate, the power which is to direct the advance of society in this respect.

The patriciate, as the centre of action and nutrition, is the special basis of the State, or City, as the woman is of the Family, the priesthood of the Church. Peculiar to the intermediate association, the patriciate can find its discipline nowhere else but in the persistent influence brought to bear upon it by the two others, the influence of love by the closest form, the influence of faith by the largest, so that its regeneration must be subsequent to theirs. The responsibilities inseparable from its position distract it from affection; its proper concentration on the present makes it neglect the cultivation of the intellect. It needs then the influence of women to lead it back constantly towards the true source of unity; the influence of the priest to remind it that solidarity is secondary to continuity; that in its care for existing interests it must not neglect those of the future. On the other hand, it is no less necessary for the harmony of Sociocracy that its industrial chiefs should exercise an influence over its moral and intellectual organs. The intellect and the emotions would otherwise infallibly be led astray into idle enquiries or mystical exaggerations, as their nature prompts them to one or the other. Give a collective character to human industry, and its habitual predominance, so

Patri

ciate the

basis of the

City.

The Patri

ciate the

seat of Human Will.

Will requires power to

far from impeding the moral and intellectual progress of the race, is on the contrary the indispensable condition of its coherence and completeness.

Sufficient for this reaction. On the assumption of it I have now to explain the prerogative by which, from the abstract point of view, I defined the patriciate, when I said that the will, a feature peculiar to objective life, and in which alone that life finds its condensed expression, resides properly in the patriciate.

Nothing can show more clearly in what way this directing power contributes to the true unity of man, which finds its natural presentation in the will as the point of convergence for the impulses of affection, the deliberations of the intellect, and the virtues of the character. Although the convergence be of rare attainment, the necessary condition of its rise and duration is the ascendancy of a concentrated power, the only means of preventing or repressing the divergences attendant on our complex nature. It is on this point that the Great Being most needs the aid of its true servants to remedy the grand defect of its constitution, the composite and subjective constitution, which is the source of tendencies, nay, even of designs, but never of will. The dead, as a corporate existence, exercise a direct control over the thoughts and feelings of the living, whereas Humanity can only impel us to will through the agency of the laws, of her own creation or of nature's, which she gradually establishes. These laws, however, cannot go beyond the giving a general impulse. They cannot inspire us with the steady and definite resolution requisite for the details of action in particular circumstances. It is the will which is in immediate connection with action, and it is in the will that lies the leading difference between the objective and the subjective life.

But to will with effect, the primary requisite is power. give it effect. Hence effective will is confined to the patricians, as a rule, as the indispensable condensers of the material forces of society, the immediate end of which is the developement of man's activity. Their great duty is to subordinate their particular decisions to the general laws, laws free from caprice, which the Great Being imposes on its collective servants. Wealth leads to the non-recognition or contempt of this universal obligation, but not the less does it lie under it, and sooner or later the

aberrations it occasions are corrected by it, so that they do not interfere with its essential object. Will is, primarily, peculiar to the collective life of man, whence it extends to his individual life, from the essential interdependence of the two. In fact men are, in large majority, naturally irresolute, and would remain so were it not for the injunctions of authority, which, with a definiteness lacking elsewhere as a rule, supplement by a natural process the decrees of destiny. Provided that it be ennobled by love, and obedience to man meets this condition better than obedience to the external order, submission promotes individual happiness in as great a degree as it does the well-being of society.

concentra

tion of

wealth in

feried.

The will, as the characteristic function of the patriciate, Necessity of requires in the first place certain material conditions, the principal one being the concentration of wealth. The natural tendency of industrial life is, it is true, towards this concentration, but there are certain leading imperfections in this form of existence for which man's providence can and should provide remedies, and the remedies are twofold. In the first place, the manhood of the race will give a systematic form to the tendencies of its childhood, and will judiciously encourage the practice of gifts, gifts both from the state and from individuals, as a means of creating patricians fully inclined to accept the discipline of the sociocratic order. Secondly, the law which makes wealth depend for its efficiency on its concentration implies that each patrician, whether created as above, or born so, extends his sphere of action till it be commensurate with the responsibilities proportionate to his capital. This lessens the cost of administration, but it does more, and the great reason for the condition is, that we multiply the securities, so much needed, for the right use of wealth, in its distribution no less than in its production.

conditions.

This last result, however, depends more on internal than Internal on external conditions, and the former are most susceptible of modification. The most important point is the emotional part of our nature, in regard to which we must remember, that the personal instincts alone are habitually able to inspire the will with sufficient energy to direct firstly our collective, then our individual existence. It is on this ground that the Positive religion sanctions in the patrician, whilst it disciplines, pride, as the foundation of an authority indispensable to society, whereas