life is
the foundation, preparation, and pattern for social life, Comte praises the
family, the connecting link between the individual and the species, as a
school of unselfishness, and approves the strictness of the Catholic Church
in regard to the indissolubility of the marriage relation. He remarks the
evil consequences of the constantly increasing division of labor, which
makes man egoistic and narrow-minded, since it hides rather than reveals
the social significance of the employment of the individual and its
connection with the welfare of the community, and seeks for a means of
checking them. Besides the universal education of youth, he demands
the establishment of a spiritual power to bring the general interest
continually to the minds of the members of all classes and avocations, to
direct education, and to enjoy the same authority in moral and intellectual
matters as is conceded to the astronomer in the affairs of his department.
The function of this power would be to occupy the position heretofore held
by the clergy. Comte conceives it as composed of positive philosophers,
entirely independent of the secular authorities, but in return cut off from
political influence and from wealth. Secular authority, on the other hand,
he wishes put into the hands of an aristocracy of capitalists, with the
bankers at the head of these governing leaders of industry.

The Dynamics, the science of the temporal succession of social phenomena,
makes use of the principle of development. The progress of society,
which is to be regarded as a great individual, consists in the growing
predominance of the higher, human activities over the lower and animal. The
humanity in us, it is true, will never attain complete ascendency over the
animality, but we can approach nearer and nearer to the ideal, and it is
our duty to aid in this march of civilization. Although the law of progress
holds good for all sides of mental life, for art, politics, and morals,
as well as for science, nevertheless the most important factor in the
evolution of the human race is the development of the intellect as the
guiding power in us (though not in itself the strongest). Awakened first by
the lower wants, the intellect assumes in increasing measure the guidance
of human operations, and gives a determinate direction to the feelings. The
passions divide men, and, without the guidance of the speculative faculty,
would mutually cripple one another; that which alone u