e
only wonder is how men could have been prevented from reaching it
sooner. It marks one of the principal differences between the political
philosophy of the present time and that of the past; but M. Comte
adopted it when the opposite mode of thinking was still general, and
there are few thinkers to whom the principle owes more in the way of
comment and illustration.

Again, while he sets forth the historical succession of systems of
belief and forms of political society, and places in the strongest light
those imperfections in each which make it impossible that any of them
should be final, this does not make him for a moment unjust to the men
or the opinions of the past. He accords with generous recognition the
gratitude due to all who, with whatever imperfections of doctrine or
even of conduct, contributed materially to the work of human
improvement. In all past modes of thought and forms of society he
acknowledged a useful, in many a necessary, office, in carrying mankind
through one stage of improvement into a higher. The theological spirit
in its successive forms, the metaphysical in its principal varieties,
are honoured by him for the services they rendered in bringing mankind
out of pristine savagery into a state in which more advanced modes of
belief became possible. His list of heroes and benefactors of mankind
includes, not only every important name in the scientific movement, from
Thales of Miletus to Fourier the mathematician and Blainville the
biologist, and in the aesthetic from Homer to Manzoni, but the most
illustrious names in the annals of the various religions and
philosophies, and the really great politicians in all states of
society.[20] Above all, he has the most profound admiration for the
services rendered by Christianity, and by the Church of the middle ages.
His estimate of the Catholic period is such as the majority of
Englishmen (from whom we take the liberty to differ) would deem
exaggerated, if not absurd. The great men of Christianity, from St Paul
to St Francis of Assisi, receive his warmest homage: nor does he forget
the greatness even of those who lived and thought in the centuries in
which the Catholic Church, having stopt short while the world had gone
on, had become a hindrance to progress instead of a promoter of it; such
men as Fenelon and St Vincent de Paul, Bossuet and Joseph de Maistre.
A more comprehensive, and, in the primitive sense of the term, more
catholic, sympathy and r