remain always necessarily incompatible with the permanent liberty left to each, to throw back every day into endless discussion the first principles even of society....

“The dogma of equality is the most essential and the most influential after that which I have just examined, and is, besides, in necessary relation to the principle of the unrestricted liberty of judgment; for this last indirectly leads to the conclusion of an equality of the most fundamental character—­an equality of intelligence.  In its bearing on the ancient system, it has happily promoted the development of modern civilization, by presiding over the final dissolution of the old social classification.  But this function constitutes the sole progressive destination of this energetic dogma, which tends in its turn to prevent every just reorganization, since its destructive activity is blindly directed against the basis of every new classification.  For, whatever that basis may be, it cannot be reconciled with a pretended equality, which, to all intelligent men, can now only signify the triumph of the inequalities developed by modern civilization, over those which had predominated in the infancy of society....

“The same philosophical appreciation is applicable with equal ease to the dogma of the sovereignty of the people.  Whilst estimating, as is fit, the indispensable transitional office of this revolutionary dogma, no true philosopher can now misunderstand the fatal anarchical tendency of this metaphysical conception, since in its absolute application it opposes itself to all regular institution, condemning indefinitely all superiors to an arbitrary dependence on the multitude of their inferiors, by a sort of transference to the people of the much-reprobated right of kings.”

[49] “There is,” says M. Comte here in a note, which consists of an extract from a previous work—­“there is no liberty of conscience in astronomy, in physics, in chemistry, even in physiology; every one would think it absurd not to give credit to the principles established in these sciences by competent men.  If it is otherwise in politics, it is because the ancient principles having fallen; and new ones not being yet formed, there are, properly speaking, in this interval no established principles.”

As our author had shown how the theologic philosophy was inconsistent often with itself, so, in criticising the metaphysics, he exposes here also certain self-contradictions.  He reproaches it with having, in its contests with the old system, endeavoured, at each stage, to uphold and adopt some of the elementary principles of that very system it was engaged in destroying.