and laudable scientific inquiry. He thinks there is a large
scope for it still, in adding to our power over the external world, but
chiefly in perfecting our own physical, intellectual, and moral nature.
He holds that all our mental strength should be economized, for the
pursuit of this object in the mode leading most directly to the end.
With this view, some one problem should always be selected, the solution
of which would be more important than any other to the interests of
humanity, and upon this the entire intellectual resources of the
theoretic mind should be concentrated, until it is either resolved, or
has to be given up as insoluble: after which mankind should go on to
another, to be pursued with similar exclusiveness. The selection of this
problem of course rests with the sacerdotal order, or in other words,
with the High Priest. We should then see the whole speculative intellect
of the human race simultaneously at work on one question, by orders from
above, as a French minister of public instruction once boasted that a
million of boys were saying the same lesson during the same half-hour in
every town and village of France. The reader will be anxious to know,
how much better and more wisely the human intellect will be applied
under this absolute monarchy, and to what degree this system of
government will be preferable to the present anarchy, in which every
theorist does what is intellectually right in his own eyes. M. Comte has
not left us in ignorance on this point. He gives us ample means of
judging. The Pontiff of Positivism informs us what problem, in his
opinion, should be selected before all others for this united pursuit.

What this problem is, we must leave those who are curious on the subject
to learn from the treatise itself. When they have done so, they will be
qualified to form their own opinion of the amount of advantage which the
general good of mankind would be likely to derive, from exchanging the
present "dispersive speciality" and "intellectual anarchy" for the
subordination of the intellect to the _coeur_, personified in a High
Priest, prescribing a single problem for the undivided study of the
theoretic mind.

We have given a sufficient general idea of M. Comte's plan for the
regeneration of human society, by putting an end to anarchy, and
"systematizing" human thought and conduct under the direction of
feeling. But an adequate conception will not have been formed of the
height of his sel