e can be an
orderly brothel as well as an orderly nunnery, and all order rests on
co-operation. We presume co-operation. We require an end for which to
co-operate.

I have already compared the science of sociology to that of medicine;
and the comparison will again be a very instructive one. The aim of both
sciences is to produce health; and the relation of health to happiness
is in both cases the same. It is an important condition of the full
enjoyment of anything: but it will by no means of itself give or guide
us to the best thing. A man may be in excellent health, and yet, if he
be prudent, be leading a degrading life. So, too, may a society. The
Cities of the Plain may, for all we know to the contrary, have been in
excellent social health; indeed, there is every reason to believe they
were. They were, apparently, to a high degree strong and prosperous;
and the sort of happiness that their citizens set most store by was only
too generally attainable. There were not ten men to be found in them by
whom the _highest good_ had not been realised.

There are, however, two suppositions, on which the general good, or the
health of the social organism, can be given a more definite meaning, and
made in some sense an adequate test of conduct. And one or other of
these suppositions is apparently always lurking in the positivist mind.
But though, when unexpressed, and only barely assented to, they may seem
to be true, their entire falsehood will appear the moment they are
distinctly stated.

One of these suppositions is, that for human happiness health is alone
requisite--health in the social organism including sufficient wealth and
freedom; and that man's life, whenever it is not interfered with, will
be moral, dignified, and delightful naturally, no matter how he lives
it. But this supposition, from a moralist, is of course nonsense. For,
were it true, as we have just seen, Sodom might have been as moral as
the tents of Abraham; and in a perfect state there would be a fitting
place for both. The social organism indeed, in its highest state of
perfection, would manifest the richest variety in the development of
such various parts. It might consist of a number of motley communes[10]
of monogamists and of free-lovers, of ascetics and sybarites, of saints
and [Greek: paiderastai]--each of them being stones in this true
_Civitas Dei_, this holy city of God. Of course it may be contended that
this state of things would be desirabl