were;--first, that European
society was approaching a crisis, the peculiarity of which, as distinct
from former ones, would be, that it would be an industrial revolution; and
the industrial mind would obtain the mastery of the administration; and,
secondly, that the accompaniment would be a new organization of industry
on the principle of co-operation. We cannot track these schools into their
ramifications(874) and their indirect expression in lighter
literature,(875) nor notice the levelling system of communism or
co-operative socialism which completed the cycle;(876) but it will be
remembered, that when the revolution of 1848 ensued, the schemes for
organization of labour were one of its peculiarities; the social republic
of those who regarded the democracy as a means, mixed with the political
republicans, who thought it to be an end.

It will be noticed that the schemes of these socialist philosophers,
though analogous as political theories, in proposing organization of
labour and consequent monopoly, to the English socialism of Owen before
named, are unlike it in philosophical origin and religious tendency. In
philosophical origin his system rests on sensation, theirs on feeling; his
degrades human nature, theirs elevates it. His denounces priestcraft as
imposture, and religion as obsolete; theirs, though identifying religion
and industry, regards religion as the highest expression of humanity, the
great goal to which nature is developing: his leads to deism or atheism,
theirs to pantheism. Yet theirs is not less hurtful, for they reject with
contempt the dogmatic teaching of revelation, though they appropriate the
Christian virtues; like the German philosophy they resolve the Deity into
a law, according to which the universe evolves.

One of the minds however which was trained in the school of St. Simon,
viz. Comte,(877) has developed a system known by the name of Positivism,
which in its effects is not merely thus negative, but amounts to positive
and dogmatic unbelief. He showed traces of the school from which he
sprang, both in considering politics to be the highest science, in
regarding humanity as a progress, and in adducing individualism as the
sole cause of social evil and anarchy. He commenced similarly by taking an
estimate of the present state of knowledge, and seizing the law which
presides over the progress of knowledge.(878) This law he stated as
consisting of three stages, through which each science p