f-confidence, until something more has been told. Be it
known, then, that M. Comte by no means proposes this new constitution of
society for realization in the remote future. A complete plan of
measures of transition is ready prepared, and he determines the year,
before the end of the present century, in which the new spiritual and
temporal powers will be installed, and the regime of our maturity will
begin. He did not indeed calculate on converting to Positivism, within
that time, more than a thousandth part of all the heads of families in
Western Europe and its offshoots beyond the Atlantic. But he fixes the
time necessary for the complete political establishment of Positivism at
thirty-three years, divided into three periods, of seven, five, and
twenty-one years respectively. At the expiration of seven, the direction
of public education in France would be placed in M. Comte's hands. In
five years more, the Emperor Napoleon, or his successor, will resign his
power to a provisional triumvirate, composed of three eminent
proletaires of the positivist faith; for proletaires, though not fit for
permanent rule, are the best agents of the transition, being the most
free from the prejudices which are the chief obstacle to it. These
rulers will employ the remaining twenty-one years in preparing society
for its final constitution; and after duly installing the Spiritual
Power, and effecting the decomposition of France into the seventeen
republics before mentioned, will give over the temporal government of
each to the normal dictatorship of the three bankers. A man may be
deemed happy, but scarcely modest, who had such boundless confidence in
his own powers of foresight, and expected so complete a triumph of his
own ideas on the reconstitution of society within the possible limits of
his lifetime. If he could live (he said) to the age of Pontenelle, or of
Hobbes, or even of Voltaire, he should see all this realized, or as good
as realized. He died, however, at sixty, without leaving any disciple
sufficiently advanced to be appointed his successor. There is now a
College, and a Director, of Positivism; but Humanity no longer possesses
a High Priest.

What more remains to be said may be despatched more summarily. Its
interest is philosophic rather than practical. In his four volumes of
"Politique Positive," M. Comte revises and reelaborates the scientific
and historical expositions of his first treatise. His object is to
systemat