5^0 FRANCE. without the guidance of the speculative faculty, would mutu- ally cripple one another ; that which alone unites them into a collection force is a common belief, an idea. Ideas are related to feeling — to quote a comparison from John Stuart Mill's valuable treatise Auguste Comte and PositivistUy 3d ed., 1882, a work of which we have made considerable use — as the steersman who directs the ship is to the steam which drives it forward. Thus the history of humanity has been determined by the history of man's intellectual con- victions, and this in turn by the three familiar stages in the theory of the universe. With the development from the theological to the positive mode of thought is most inti- mately connected, further, the transition from the military to the industrial mode of life. As the religious spirit pre» pares the way for the scientific spirit, so without the dominion of the military spirit industry could not have been developed. It was only in the school of war that the earliest societies could learn order ; slavery was beneficial in that through it labor was imposed upon the greater part of mankind in spite of their aversion to it. The political preponderance of the legists corresponds to the intermediate, metaphysical stage. The sociological law (discovered by Comte in the year 1822) harmonizes also with the customary division which separates the ancient from the modern world by the Middle Ages. In his philosophy of history Comte gives the further application of these principles. Here he has won commen- dation even from his opponents for a sense of justice which merits respect and for his comprehensive view. The out- looks and proposals for the future here interspersed were in later writings* worked out into a comprehensive theory of the regeneration of society ; the extravagant character of which has given occasion to his critics to make a com- plete division between the second, " subjective or senti- mental," period of his thinking, in which the philosopher is said to be transformed into the high priest of a new
- Positivist Catechism, 1852 [English translation by Congreve, 1858, 2d ed.,
1883] ; System of Positive Polity, 4 vols., 1851-54 [English translation, 1875- 77]. Cf. Piinjer, A. Comtes " Religion der Menschheit" in xht Jahrbiicher fUf protestantische Theologie, 1882.
