erence to the relative point of
view, and from this it follows that the social state, regarded as a
whole, has been as perfect in each period as the co-existing condition
of humanity and its environment would allow.

The elaboration of these ideas in relation to the history of the
civilisation of the most advanced portion of the human race occupies
two of the volumes of the _Positive Philosophy_, and has been accepted
by competent persons of very different schools as a masterpiece of
rich, luminous, and far-reaching suggestion. Whatever additions it may
receive, and whatever corrections it may require, this analysis of
social evolution will continue to be regarded as one of the great
achievements of human intellect. The demand for the first of Comte's
two works has gone on increasing in a significant degree. It was
completed, as we have said, in 1842. A second edition was published in
1864; a third some years afterwards; and while we write (1876) a
fourth is in the press. Three editions within twelve years of a work
of abstract philosophy in six considerable volumes are the measure of
a very striking influence. On the whole, we may suspect that no part
of Comte's works has had so much to do with this marked success as his
survey and review of the course of history.

The third volume of the later work, the _Positive Polity_, treats of
social dynamics, and takes us again over the ground of historic
evolution. It abounds with remarks of extraordinary fertility and
comprehensiveness; but it is often arbitrary; its views of the past
are strained into coherence with the statical views of the preceding
volume; and so far as concerns the period to which the present writer
happens to have given special attention, it is usually slight and
sometimes random. As it was composed in rather less than six months,
and as the author honestly warns us that he has given all his
attention to a more profound co-ordination, instead of working out the
special explanations more fully, as he had promised, we need not be
surprised if the result is disappointing to those who had mastered the
corresponding portion of the _Positive Philosophy_. Comte explains the
difference between his two works. In the first his 'chief object was
to discover and demonstrate the laws of progress, and to exhibit in
one unbroken sequence the collective destinies of mankind, till then
invariably regarded as a series of events wholly beyond the reach of
explanation, an