The Dynamics, the science of the temporal succession of social phenomena, makes use of the principle of development.  The progress of society, which is to be regarded as a great individual, consists in the growing predominance of the higher, human activities over the lower and animal.  The humanity in us, it is true, will never attain complete ascendency over the animality, but we can approach nearer and nearer to the ideal, and it is our duty to aid in this march of civilization.  Although the law of progress holds good for all sides of mental life, for art, politics, and morals, as well as for science, nevertheless the most important factor in the evolution of the human race is the development of the intellect as the guiding power in us (though not in itself the strongest).  Awakened first by the lower wants, the intellect assumes in increasing measure the guidance of human operations, and gives a determinate direction to the feelings.  The passions divide men, and, without the guidance of the speculative faculty, would mutually cripple one another; that which alone unites them into a collection force is a common belief, an idea.  Ideas are related to feeling—­to quote a comparison from John Stuart Mill’s valuable treatise Auguste Comte and Positivism, 3d ed., 1882, a work of which we have made considerable use—­as the steersman who directs the ship is to the steam which drives it forward.  Thus the history of humanity has been determined by the history of man’s intellectual convictions, and this in turn by the three familiar stages in the theory of the universe.  With the development from the theological to the positive mode of thought is most intimately connected, further, the transition from the military to the industrial mode of life.  As the religious spirit prepares the way for the scientific spirit, so without the dominion of the military spirit industry could not have been developed.  It was only in the school of war that the earliest societies could learn order; slavery was beneficial in that through it labor was imposed upon the greater part of mankind in spite of their aversion to it.  The political preponderance of the legists corresponds to the intermediate, metaphysical stage.  The sociological law (discovered by Comte in the year 1822) harmonizes also with the customary division which separates the ancient from the modern world by the Middle Ages.

In his philosophy of history Comte gives the further application of these principles.  Here he has won commendation even from his opponents for a sense of justice which merits respect and for his comprehensive view.  The outlooks and proposals for the future here interspersed were in later writings[1] worked out into a comprehensive theory of the regeneration of society; the extravagant character of which has given occasion to his critics to make a complete division between the second, “subjective or sentimental,” period of his thinking, in which the philosopher is