to lower steps of the
scientific scale; and that the final science (as was shown more
particularly in a previous article) admits and necessitates a synthesis,
which is not merely subjective, but also objective. For Comte does not
hold that we are to regard other men merely as means, or to seek to
understand them only so far as is necessary for the gratification of
some desire in ourselves as individuals. We are, on the contrary, to
seek to know man in and for himself; and when we do so know him, we find
that he is essentially social, and that the individual, as such, is a
mere "fiction of the metaphysicians." Here, again, therefore, we find
that Comte's system ends in a compromise between opposite tendencies of
thought. His subjective synthesis proved after all to be objective, at
least so far as mankind were concerned; and in like manner his
opposition of the intellect to the heart turns out to be only partial;
for when the intelligence is directed to psychology and sociology, it
gives us an idea of humanity, according to which all men are "members
one of another." The warfare of the heart and the intelligence thus
resolves itself into another expression of that dualism between the
world and man, which we found to be an essential characteristic of
Comte's system.

The second question--whether the altruistic affections of man do not
imply, or are not necessarily connected with, the development of his
reason or self-consciousness--is even more important. Comte, like Hume,
took all the desires, higher and lower, as tendencies given apart from
the reason, which can only devise the means of satisfying them, and is,
therefore, necessarily their servant. Reason itself on this view does
not essentially affect the character of those tendencies which it obeys.
"_Cupiditas est appetitus cum ejusdem conscientia_," said Spinoza, and
he then went on to speak as if the "_conscientia_" made no change in the
character of the "_appetitus_." But if we think of appetites or
desires--some of them tending to the good of the individual, others to
the good of the species--as existing in an animal which is not conscious
of a self, these appetites will neither be selfish nor unselfish in the
sense in which we apply these terms to man. Where there is no _ego_
there can be no _alter-ego_, and therefore neither egoism nor altruism.
The idea of the self as a permanent unity to which all the different
tendencies are referred, and the rise in conseq