stem can only change these from what they
already see them, not by strengthening, but by weakening them. Take the
world then as it is at present, and the sense, on the individual's part,
that he personally is promoting its progress, can belong to, and can
stimulate, exceptional men only, who are doing some public work; and it
will be found even in these cases that the pleasure which this sense
gives them is largely fortified (as is said of wine) by the entirely
alien sense of fame and power. On the generality of men it neither has,
nor can have, any effect whatever, or even if it gives a glow to their
inclinations in some cases, it will at any rate never curb them in any.
The fact indeed that things in general do tend to get better in certain
ways, must produce in most men not effort but acquiescence. It may, when
the imagination brings it home to them, shed a pleasing light
occasionally over the surface of their private lives: but it would be as
irrational to count on this as a stimulus to farther action, as to
expect that the summer sunshine would work a steam-engine.

If we consider, then, that even the present condition of things is far
more calculated to produce the enthusiasm of humanity than the condition
that the positivists are preparing for themselves, we shall see how
utterly chimerical is their entire practical system. It is like a
drawing of a cathedral, which looks magnificent at the first glance, but
which a second glance shows to be composed of structural
impossibilities--blocks of masonry resting on no foundations, columns
hanging from the roofs, instead of supporting them, and doors and
windows with inverted arches. The positive system could only work
practically were human nature to suffer a complete change--a change
which it has no spontaneous tendency to make, which no known power could
ever tend to force on it, and which, in short, there is no ground of
any kind for expecting.

There are two characteristics in men, for instance, which, though they
undoubtedly do exist, the positive system requires to be indefinitely
magnified--the imagination, and unselfishness. The work of the
imagination is to present to the individual consciousness the remote
ends to which all progress is to be directed; and the desire to work for
these is, on the positive supposition, to conquer all mere personal
impulses. Now men have already had an end set before them, in the shape
of the joys of heaven, which was far bright