We have just seen something of this scientific method.  M. Comte himself is well aware that it is a style of thought by no means adapted to the multitude.  Therefore there will arise with the scientific method an altogether new class, an intellectual aristocracy, (not the present race of savans or their successors, whom he is particularly anxious to exclude from all such advancement,) who will expound to the people the truths to which that method shall give birth.  This class will take under its control all that relates to education.  It will be the seat of the moral power, not of the administrative.  This, together with some arguments to establish what few are disposed to question, the fundamental character of the laws of property and of marriage, is all that we are here presented with towards the definite re-organization of society.

We shall not go back to the question, already touched upon, and which lies at the basis of all this—­how far it is possible to construct a science of Sociology.  There is only one way in which the question can be resolved in the affirmative—­namely, by constructing the science.

Meanwhile we may observe, that the general consent of a cultivated order of minds to a certain class of truths, is not sufficient for the purposes of government.  We take, says M. Comte, our chemistry from the chemist, our astronomy from the astronomer; if these were fixed principles, we should take our politics with the same ease from the graduated politician.  But it is worth while to consider what it is we do when we take our chemistry from the chemist, and our astronomy from the astronomer.  We assume, on the authority of our teacher, certain facts which it is not in our power to verify; but his reasonings upon these facts we must be able to comprehend.  We follow him as he explains the facts by which knowledge has been obtained, and yield to his statement a rational conviction.  Unless we do this, we cannot be said to have any knowledge whatever of the subject—­any chemistry or astronomy at all.  Now, presuming there were a science of politics, as fixed and perfect as that of astronomy, the people must, at all events, be capable of understanding its exposition, or they could not possibly be governed by it.  We need hardly say that those ideas, feelings, and sentiments, which can be made general, are those only on which government can rest.

In the course of the preceding extract, our author exposes the futility of that attempt which certain churchmen are making, as well on this side of the Channel as the other, to reason men back into a submission of their reason.  Yet, if the science of Sociology should be above the apprehension of the vulgar, (as M. Comte seems occasionally to presume it would be,) he would impose on his intellectual priesthood a task of the very same kind, and even still more hopeless.  A multitude once taught to argue and decide on politics, must be reasoned back into a submission of their reason to political teachers—­teachers who have no sacred writings, and no traditions from which to argue a delegated authority, but whose authority must be founded on the very reasonableness of the entire system of their doctrine.  But this is a difficulty we are certainly premature in discussing, as the true Catholic church in politics has still itself to be formed.